Mostly Good
by icebreather
Summary: A perp gets under Casey's skin; she finds herself turning to Fin Tutuola. Chapter 19 is now up.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: the timeline is wherever you desire during Casey's years as ADA, after the attack in her office: Fin and Casey have known each other for awhile, but I've kept Casey's hair red. Munch & Fin are partners. You read the pairing right, but be aware that they move slo-o-o-wwwly, because that's how I think it would be between these two fascinating people._

_SVU_

_SVU_

_SVU_

"Is that all?" Munch leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, head cocked to the side to indicate that he didn't, at all, believe that that was all. The suspected perp across from him unfolded from his duplicate pose to incline into the table between them. Oddly light blue eyes glinted back at the detective.

"For now," the man drawled while a grin creased his lean cheeks. He hiked his eyebrows suggestively. "But I'm pretty sure my memory could be jogged by that long-legged red-headed cuteness I passed on my way in here." Strangely, a hint of genuine interest gleamed through his sarcasm; the first hint of anything genuine they'd seem out of the man all day.

From the other side of the room's two-way mirror, Fin arched one brow. Cuteness? He didn't glance at the red-headed woman beside him, but from the corner of his eye he saw Casey's lips thin in exasperation. Fin knew exactly what the ADA was feeling. James Kirnel was the suspect in a string of three especially violent rapes, the latest having culminating in murder. Playing the part of a witness, he'd been slowly doling out tidbits of information over the course of the afternoon, but only what he knew the cops already had. He was game-playing; not well, but it had gotten annoying long ago.

They were sure this guy was the doer, and Fin had thought himself past patience. It'd been a long week, most of it spent chasing this guy. It had been an especially long day, pretending to intend to use him as a material witness in order to catch up with him, haul him here from two hours away upstate, and then question him. All this been straight-up, old-fashioned police work, about as old-fashioned as it came; since there was hardly any physical evidence, the theory of the crime had been made entirely from descriptions and timing and opportunity. Despite their certainty that Kirnel was the guy, Fin and Munch needed a confession to make this stick. That was why the ADA was in here.

Fin, on the other hand, was in here because Kirnel had refused to talk if the black detective was at the table, and he and Munch had decided to hold off on using the race angle. The man had plenty of other issues that could be played. Four hours was long enough, though, and by the time the paperwork on this was done, it was going to be near midnight. Fin had thought he was beyond the point of being interested enough to play the game any more. But now . . .

"That's weird," he said, and beside him Novak nodded in agreement. He observed her from the corner of his eye for a moment more. Her fall of red hair glinted dully in the fluorescents overhead; the lines of her cheek and jaw were fine, and without ever having touched it he knew her skin would be soft. Her jacket and skirt were some rusty red color that suited the time of year, and her body was slender with enough curve to be appealing. Long-legged … yeah, the legs were nice. Kirnel had something there. Casey was attractive, certainly. But 'cute'? It just wasn't the word he'd have picked to describe the unit's striking, stylish, focused, demanding ADA.

She was definitely appealing, though. He found himself tilting his head at the thought. He sure couldn't fault their suspect's taste.

Fin stood listening to Munch cajole Kirnel for anything more, clues as to where he'd buried the last, missing – presumed dead due to the amount of blood found at the crime scene – victim. But his partner wasn't getting anywhere, probably blocked in part by his own frustration.

"We've been at this too long," Novak said from beside him, abruptly. "Let's try giving him what he wants." She turned to pass him on her way to the door. Fin nodded.

"For a few minutes," he said as she put her hand on the knob. "And then we'll try giving him what he doesn't want. I'm sick of this nice-guy shit."

Novak smiled at him grimly before exiting.

Fin watched her entrance to the interrogation room only peripherally; his eyes were on the suspect. He got the impression that the man would have perked his ears up, if he'd been able; every cell in the perv's body seemed to flip from lazy smugness to wired alertness in an instant. He practically vibrated.

Yeah, now that was interesting, because Novak definitely didn't fit the type of person they'd seen that Kirnel chose to victimize.

Novak sat down at the table's empty chair, the one that would have been Fin's, without speaking. Picking up his cue, Munch extended a debonair hand.

"James Kirnel," he murmured dryly, "meet our esteemed ADA Ms. Novak. She's been awaiting, patiently, your description of where the remains of Elias Zwinsky are."

"If my being here will boost your memory in any way, Mr. Kirnel," Casey said politely, "I'm at your service."

_At your service._ A leading phrase if there ever was one. So Novak wasn't going to play this subtle. Good. Fin was tired of subtle.

Kirnel moved further in over his bent elbow, a thrilled grin on his wide lips. His thin face was more animated than it had been in hours. Fin's own lip curled in aversion. Such puppy-dog attentiveness sat oddly on the rapist's craggy, handsome face. "At my service is just where I'd love to have you," he replied predictably, his southern drawl amplified from what it had been five minutes before. "I bet you're good at servicing, aren't you, honey?" Somehow he pulled off this vulgarity with an abashed, yes-I'm-bad-but-I'm-cute air that might just have worked on the average woman off the street.

Casey, Fin had reason to know, was not the average woman off the street. But she played her part well, letting a half-second of amusement show through before clamping it down with sternness. _Nice._ Kirnel tilted his head smugly, the dumbass, thinking he'd titillated her, and he was opening his mouth again when Munch forestalled him.

"She's here," he said with snide expansiveness, "I'm here, you're here, we're all waiting for this troublesome memory of yours to kick in. Where did you 'see' the body?"

"Well, where was I?" Kirnel hitched backward a little with an expression of mock studiousness. Fin saw him sneak a look at Novak to see if she noticed his cleverness. She rewarded him with a slight quirk of one lip. That seemed enough to encourage him.

"You were rather drunk, but not so much that you didn't notice the strangeness of the bag someone carried out of a nearby back door that opened into the alley." She folded her hands calmly before her on the table.

" 'Rather drunk'." Kirnel grinned again. Fin gritted his teeth. "That's not quite how I remember describing it, ma'am, but I respect you cleaning up my language. It's kind of nice to have a genuine lady in here, isn't it, Detective?"

"Oh yes, Ms. Novak. You're a breath of fresh air." Munch squinted at Kirnel, and asked outright what Fin had wondered. "Forgive the personal question, Mr. Kirnel" – oh, dry, no one did sardonic like John Munch – "but I'd gotten the ... impression ... that you preferred males. Ah, rather _young_ males." The rape victims had all been boys in their early teens.

That was treading close to not playing the game, and Kirnel's eyes narrowed for a moment. Rage and anger broke through for a moment, before he covered it with a thin smile. "I have no idea how I could have conveyed such an impression."

"Right." Munch glanced sideways at Novak, then back at Kirnel. "Moving on. The body?" He accompanied the question with a finger drummed pointedly on the table.

His gaze on Novak most of the time, Kirnel finally did tell the story he'd come in here prepared to eventually tell. He'd followed a man of uncertain height, weight, clothing, and ethnicity who was carrying a long, heavy duffel bag of uncertain color. He'd seen him dump it in the trunk of a car of uncertain tags, age, make, color, and type.

"You can't even tell us if it was a sedan or an SUV?" Munch's dryness was reaching that of the dirt in the pot of the one lone plant Fin had ever tried to grow. More arid than the Sahara, in other words.

Kirnel shook his head sorrowfully. "I can't. The alcohol, you know." He gazed earnestly at Novak; the façade was gone for a moment. "I have a problem." The words were quiet and shame-tinted. Fin cocked his head.

Novak nodded back, gravely. "It really must be a problem, if you couldn't tell the color of a vehicle that you saw in broad daylight under circumstances that made you suspicious."

"Well ..." Kirnel stared pensively at the opposite wall, a deliberately over-the-top portrayal of Lost in Thought. Novak and Munch played the game, sitting still and portraying Waiting Patiently. "It was a ... a dark color, I think." He cut a glance at Novak. "Perhaps ... blue?" he furrowed his brow. "No. Green. Yes, dark green!" He'd leaned even further forward, and aimed his triumphant smile into Novak's face. Novak raised her eyebrows anticipatorily, while Munch ostentatiously wrote down the 'fact'.

"Let's work on numbers now," the detective said to Kirnel, as though to a five-year old. "Doors. How many doors were there?"

Back to the pensive, struggling-to-recall production. Finally coming up with the astounding number of four for the quantity doors that the fictitious car could claim, Kirnel sank back into his chair with a sigh, as though he'd just completed the SAT.

"I could really use something to drink," he said in what he obviously believed was his suave voice. Novak didn't even glance at the three half-empty soda cans littering his side of the table. She just nodded, stepped outside to send someone for another soda, and came back in again.

They began again with the story, but didn't get anywhere. Could Kirnel remember any details at all about the man with the duffel? Sorrowful head-shaking. What about the duffel itself? More sorrowful head-shaking. Had he been able to recall the approximate location of the bar he'd been in? Kirnel shook his head again, even more grief-laden. They'd reached such a point of absurdity that an operatic aria wouldn't have seemed out of place in the room. Fin wanted to pound his head on the glass.

"I think," Munch suddenly shoved his chair back and stood, "I'm done here." His abruptness was startling after all the layers of cracked congeniality that they'd been wading through. His height was intimidating, too; Fin could tell from how Kirnel leaned away from the detective. Good. This was the first time he'd been on edge since Novak had gone into the room. That had been a mistake, adding her to the mix.

More than ready to switch tactics, Fin entered through the door as soon as his partner –eyes rolling - exited. Kirnel had obviously thought he was going to get some time alone with Novak; his soda had never arrived and he was leaning in requesting it again. When he caught sight of Fin, though, his head reared back on his neck and he scraped his chair backwards, tripping over its legs in his hurry to get out of it.

"Not you!" he practically screeched. "I told you I wouldn't give my statement to you!"

Casey had risen, too, an alert expression on her face.

"I know you did," Fin growled, letting his impatience and disgust grate clearly in his voice, "but I'm not here to take your statement. I'm here to arrest you."

Kirnel's eyes narrowed. "You can't arrest me," he said with certainty, all his former mock pliability gone. "You've got no evidence."

"Not for the rapes and murder," Fin snapped back as he pulled out his handcuffs. "For all the time you've wasted in here this afternoon." He moved toward the other man, who scooted back into a corner.

"That's not even a crime!" Kirnel barked, appealing to Novak. "Ma'am, he can't arrest me for time-wasting!"

Fin noted that although he'd momentarily dropped his façade, he was still calling her 'ma'am'.

Casey crossed her arms, cooler than ice. "Sure he can. It's called obstruction of a police investigation. Deliberately providing misleading information. Giving false witness ... ever read the Old Testament, Mr. Kirnel?"

Kirnel was staring at her, blinking, all expression arrested.

"N-no ..." it was the first time he didn't have a ready answer, just tripping off his tongue. Fin pressed.

"You've been spinning a story that you know none of us believe since you got here. I'm tired of pretending. You did it. We know you did it. You know we know you did it." He grabbed Kirnel's arm to spin him around; the man resisted. Fin wondered why Munch hadn't popped back in here to help him wrestle the cuffs on.

When he ran through Miranda, Kirnel, still struggling against the cuffs, shook his head. "I don't need a lawyer. I've got nothing to hide because I didn't do it, no matter what you think you know!"

"Not just me; ADA Novak knows you did it, too. Don't you?" he threw over his shoulder at her. She moved immediately to stand behind him.

"Yes," she affirmed. "I do."

Kirnel froze. Fin finally got the cuffs on and finished the Miranda-izing before he took in the guy's face. It held shock, which slowly suffused into confused hurt. Defused, he let himself be led back to the chair at the table without an objection to Fin's touching him.

Huh. The psycho actually felt Novak had betrayed him by quitting the little game they'd been playing.

"I – I don't understand-"

"You don't have to understand," Fin cut him off. "Just know that by this time tomorrow, we'll have lab results back that prove you raped and murdered Elias Zwinsky."

"I – I – what?" Kirnel's eyes had been on Novak across from him, but he managed to swivel his head toward Fin now. "No. No, there's no evidence. You're lying."

"There's evidence," Fin snapped back. "You just missed it, with all that carefulness. And it's going to put you behind bars."

"No! There's nothing! You're lying! Ma'am," he appealed, suddenly soft, "why are you lying to me?"

"There _is_ evidence," she returned. "Strong evidence. You don't stand a chance."

Again, there was that cut look on Kirnel's face. _More_, Fin silently encouraged. Much as being pressured by a black man disturbed this creep, it was Novak's 'betrayal' that was really getting to him.

Novak leaned in, as though she'd heard Fin's silent admonition. She let a disgusted curl animate her lips. "Men like you give off an odor," she breathed harshly. Fin didn't think she was acting anymore. She was just taking the cap off her emotions. "We can smell the guilt on you. The perversion. The ugliness. How could you believe it possible that we wouldn't get you?" she'd moved in closer and closer, her voice dropping lower with every inch. "We _do_ have you. You're trapped."

Kirnel was staring, riveted, caught indeed by her words and voice. _Gotcha,_ Fin thought, and went in for the kill. "Tomorrow," he laughed, in deliberate sharp contrast to Novak's cruel softness. "You'll be discussing strategy with your defense lawyer. From behind bars, where you'll be on the basis of our evidence."

"NO!" Kirnel's eyes squeezed tightly closed. "There's no evidence! I know you've got nothing! I was careful!"

And there it was. Finally.

"You were careful?" Fin mocked. "Cutting into him that many times, leaving all that blood, you were careful!"

"Yes!" Kirnel's eyes blazed open, and there was so much anger in him that although he had to know what he was doing, he didn't seem to care. His words were like grit. "I covered every inch of skin, hair and nail. I sanitized and sterilized. I left _nothing_ but blood, and I left that on purpose. _You_ are a _liar_."

It was done. Fin let his shoulders relax with a sigh.

"Yeah," he agreed evenly, "I'm a liar. And you're under arrest for the rape and murder of Elias Zwinsky."

Miranda-ized for the second time in ten minutes, Kirnel was led off by Munch, who had appeared in the doorway with a soda can evidently intended for the prisoner. Pushing the prisoner ahead of him down the hall, he shrugged back at his partner's expression of exasperation. Left behind in the interrogation room, Fin shook his head bemusedly. He met Casey's gaze.

"That was weird," he said. "The way he reacted to you ... not something I expected from a guy who likes young boys."

She shook her head, too, as she rose. "From what he did to them, I'm not so sure 'likes' is an appropriate description. He's obviously deeply psychotic. I'll have Huang give him a 730, just in case."

"Well, anyway, well played." Fin nodded to his impromptu interrogation partner. She responded with that elegant smile of hers. Smiling was something she did well, Fin noted.

_SVU_

_SVU_

"He sees the boys as himself," Dr. Huang explained to Casey later in the week. "He feels he needs punishment, and has a high degree of inner self-loathing that he's turned outward onto them. That's why the violence of his actions is so severe. He also needs to prop his fragile ego up … thus the game he played with the police. Re-enforces his clever self-image."

"What about his reaction to me?" Casey questioned.

"After we talked awhile, he mentioned an aunt with whom he lived for awhile as a child. She died when he was fifteen. But he's fixated on her. She was the only adult to provide him with security and routine. He trusted her, and says she's the only person who never let him down. He continues to have a deep-seated need to prove himself to her, and he seems to have sexualized her as well." Dr. Huang quirked a wry half-smile. "He specifically mentioned her pale skin and red hair."

Disturbed, Casey pursed her lips and frowned. She nodded her thanks to the psychiatrist and stared after him as he walked away. She wasn't seeing him, though; she was seeing Kirnel's odd, earnest blue eyes trained on hers.

_TBC? Only if you want to read more ... let me know._


	2. Chapter 2

After it began, the trial progressed rapidly. It didn't, after all, take that long to have Fin explain their 'talks' with the 'witness', Huang describe the man's emotional state, and to sum up the patterns the detectives had found. Casey was thankful for this, because the defendant had managed to somehow get under her skin in a way she hadn't before encountered. With his own lawyer, the man was cocky, attempting a suave unconcerned air, and trying to manipulate the jury in ways that were obvious and off-putting. But when Casey cross-examined him, he dissolved again in an earnest, look-how-smart-I-am puddle. Though she maintained a stoic expression as she questioned him, Casey felt the back of her neck prickling every time he met her gaze with that pleading please-approve-of-me look.

Standing on the courthouse steps after a few parting words with Kirnel's lawyer, Casey tipped her head back and let her eyes close briefly. It felt good to be out in the sun. Generally, she loved a courtroom – she thrived there. But dealing with Kirnel's flip-flopping between crudely manipulative deviant and little boy eager to be liked had been wearing, and just, well, creepy.

As the trial had progressed, his eagerness had disappeared into confusion and betrayal when she dug and picked at witnesses and caught him out on lies. Then by the end of the day, Kirnel's confusion morphed entirely into a simmering anger that was directed solely at her. Casey drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the crisp late-day breeze, trying to sigh her disgust out with the air as it left her.

"Asleep on your feet?" came a familiar wry voice from beside her. Casey opened her eyes with a faint smile, feeling better.

"Just enjoying the fresh air," she replied. "It was a little, uh, stuffy, in there."

Fin's brown gaze was assessing. Casey hitched her shoulders defensively, able to see that he knew there was more to it than that. Don't let them see you flinch – she knew the rule well and had tried to follow it to the letter, today, before the people in the courtroom. But her passion for her job and her feelings about perpetrators weren't always easy for her to contain; and Fin, besides possessing the high degree of perceptiveness that came with his job description, also worked with her on a weekly - sometimes daily - basis. And, apparently, he was empathic.

She didn't want that. She liked Fin well enough but she didn't need him seeing this particular vulnerability. She had to work with the man, and needed his respect for her skills, not his pity for her weaknesses.

"Seemed like more than just the air was a little too close," he commented calmly. "But you're right, it's better out here."

His empathy extended to her desire not to discuss her unease, then? She should have expected that, she told herself when he nodded and walked on alone. Fin didn't generally intrude where he wasn't wanted.

The evening was a long one for Casey, but that wasn't so unusual. She left the office noting how much earlier it was getting dark, these days; the streetlights were on. Her phone rang as she was getting into her car parked in the garage. When she answered, there was silence on the other end. She'd never gotten poor reception in the garage before, but she supposed the layers of concrete above her were interfering. Hitting 'end call', she fumbled for her keys. Usually she had them out; she was cautious when caution was warranted, and after dark in a city garage she felt it was warranted. And lately, she'd been even more cautious than usual.

With these thoughts in her head, she twisted around sharply at the sound of footsteps behind her. A few rows away, someone she vaguely recognized from around the office nodded to her as he climbed into his vehicle.

_A little jumpy tonight, are we?_ Casey shook her head at herself as she opened her car door. It would be good to get home.

_SVU_

_SVU_

If the trial was a fast one, the jury's deliberation was even faster. Despite the strength of the impassioned confession that had been obtained in interrogation, the case was weak on evidence and the confession had been later retracted. So Casey attributed the quick verdict largely to the abrupt and disorienting behavioural swings Kirnel exhibited when called to the stand. Though he obviously believed he was intelligent, he wasn't actually that smart, a point that Casey emphasized in her summation. When she turned from addressing the jury for the final time, she found that Kirnel was straining against his cuffs in her direction, a mask of rage and hatred on his face. Refusing to be cowed, Casey lifted her chin and met his blazing eyes briefly but firmly.

After the judge made his concluding remarks, Casey stood and gathered her things quickly, eager to leave the courtroom. The baliff was approaching Kirnel when the newly convicted man leaned around his lawyer toward Casey's table.

"You aren't who I thought you were," he hissed, just loudly enough to reach her ears. "You bitch, I thought you were different. Worth something." His lawyer tried to hush him, but Kirnel shrugged his arm off. "You'll be sorry." His voice was rising as Casey stared woodenly back at him. "Think you're untouchable?" he continued shrilly. "You aren't!"

The judge was calling directions that the prisoner be contained. The bailiff had reached Kirnel, and was trying to haul him away. He resisted. Casey was vaguely conscious of hurried footsteps behind her. Kirnel wasn't quieting. "I know people ... you're _going_ to be touched, Miss Untouchable. Manhandled." He drawled that last word caressingly, and it crawled over Casey's skin with hairy tarantula legs.

"Shut your mouth," a voice growled at Kirnel from just over Casey's shoulder. Immediately after, Fin's shoulders appeared before her, blocking her view of the irate prisoner. She stared at the solid, bunching muscles of the detective's back while hearing the bailiff, with the help of a guard, finally succeed in making Kirnel move. "I'm going to make sure you're violated," the perp was beginning to scream as they dragged him away. "I'm going to make you hurt! I'm going to make you feel as filthy as you are!"

Her own movement arrested, Casey just stared around Fin's shoulder as the door closed behind the newly convicted felon. Then she startled as Fin turned to face her. He put a hand out and gripped her shoulder: he'd never done that before, and the unfamiliarity of the gesture broke through the chill fog that had surrounded her.

"You OK?"

Casey blinked, looking into Fin's face. Calmly he pushed both his hands into his jacket pockets, his chin tilted back, his expression just sardonic enough to remind her that he wasn't easily fooled by facades. A classic Fin stance. She took a deep breath and let the comrade-ness of him anchor her.

"Yes," she said, grabbing her attaché case. His previous shielding stance was slowly registering. She didn't need that. "This is not the first time a criminal has yelled threats at me in court."

He nodded, and moved with her out of the building. Outside, it was breezy enough to blow her hair back from her face. Casey felt her shoulders relaxing in the openness, and in the quiet acceptance of the man beside her. That was something she'd never noticed before about Fin, she realized as they strode down the steps together. Despite the swift words of anger she'd heard from him on rare occasion, he was a very self-contained man. And yet closed as he was, she had seen his care for others; victims, family, co-workers. Taken together those traits seamed to mean that he could both comprehend and respect the desire to keep one's emotions to oneself.

Casey appreciated those qualities, and so if the smile she gave him was more real and open than what she normally let out around the squad room, it was because of that appreciation.

"You going back to the office?" Fin asked as he dug into a pocket for his keys. He'd needed to be present to testify earlier in the trial, Casey reflected, but he wouldn't have had to be here today for the summations and deliberation. This case must have caught his interest.

"No, actually," Casey shook her head, not wanting to go back to her office alone just yet. Which was ridiculous, but ... "I should go to the squad room and do some follow-up on a few things."

"Want a ride?" Fin gestured toward where he was parked. Casey nodded, smiled her thanks, and followed him. The sun had dipped behind the buildings to the west; the air was cool with autumn approaching, which Fin enjoyed, so he left the car windows down. He saw Casey tilt her head toward the long orange-gold sun rays, her eyes shuttered briefly. Her posture relaxed, her breath sighed out. She was almost a different person for that short space of time.

But then her phone rang, and she straightened, firmed and snapped back to her visibly driven, Type-A self. Fin viewed this with interest. For a moment there, Casey had been ... lighter.

"Hello, Novak," she said into the phone a couple of times, then hung up while rolling her eyes. Must have been a poor connection. Casey put the cell away with huffy motions that to Fin seemed out of proportion to a bad cell signal.

"Looks like you could stand for a little relaxation," he observed aloud, eyes on the road. Casey shook her head.

"Not going to happen till late tonight," she answered. "Too much paperwork." Her mouth quirked ruefully at the corner. Again, Fin caught a very fleeting impression of lightness.

"I understand," he returned in kind, because he did. She wasn't the only one with a pile of paper to tend to.

Back at the precinct, however, he found his own dissipating faster than he'd expected. Munch had gotten a lot done while Fin was gone. As she commonly did when in the squad room, Casey borrowed a chair and used a corner of Fin's desk while she made calls, snagged detectives for quick conferences, and filed a report. From where Fin sat a foot away, none of it seemed like anything she couldn't have done from her own office.

Eventually, the room mostly emptied of the day shift detectives as they finished and left. Casey riffled through her attaché case with a rather resigned air, and then glanced unenthusiastically at her watch. Finally, slowly, she gathered everything and stuffed it into her case. There was reluctance in the movements.

_Not my business_, Fin told himself as she pushed to her feet. And it was evident the ADA didn't intend to be telegraphing to him what she was feeling. But to Fin, Casey had never been able to cover her emotions well – they lay too close under her skin.

"Headed home?" Fin asked casually. Not inquiring into her life at all. Nope, just making conversation.

Casey looked at her watch again, as though the time might somehow have changed by more or less than the twenty seconds that had passed since she'd last checked it. It was after 11:00 pm; Fin reflected on the darkness outside and the fact that Casey would have to hail a cab back to the DA's offices.

"I should," she said. "But I've still got work at the office . . ." her voice trailed off as she gazed away toward the elevator.

She didn't want to go; whether it was the amount of work she had left or the time of night, Fin didn't know. He'd never seen her hesitant about either of those things before. If she had work at her office, she ought to have headed straight there after the trial concluded.

"You OK?" he questioned. All right, so maybe that was a personal question, but she didn't look right.

"Yes." Casey firmed her spine, turning back to him with a smile as false as the rest of her wasn't. But when she met his gaze, he saw hers waver, and the steel in her backbone melted a bit. "I am," she tried to affirm, in a quieter voice, "I just ... I'm being stupid." Her gaze flicked toward the hallway and its elevators again, and Fin was finally able to label what he was seeing in her. It was fear.

He hit 'log off' and pushed back from his desk. "I'll go with you," he said calmly but decisively. Casey frowned.

"It's not far," she began.

"I'm coming," he answered, just as coolly as before, and something made her nod acquiescence. Fin gathered up his jacket and followed her when she swung toward the hallway again. There was silence as she hit the 'down' button, and it lengthened as they boarded the car and began the ride down. Fin didn't push for conversation. They stood side by side and watched the glowing numbers count down.

"Will you have to catch up in the morning?" Casey finally asked.

"Nah. I was pretty much done." He had been – to be honest with himself, he'd been puttering there at the end, seeing if Casey was going to tell him what was up.

"Oh. Good." Casey nodded. He could tell she felt awkward.

"You have much left at the office that you need to get done before tomorrow?"

Casey shrugged. "A few hours' worth, maybe. Enough that I don't want to have to come in early and do it."

"Did you drive in?"

"Yeah."

_Stay out of it,_ he told himself. But he'd already intruded with his questions. And there was no reason why she had to go out into the city night alone, when he was around and his time was free. So ...

"Hey." He touched her elbow lightly. "I can drive you over, wait, and then run you home." Now he was the one to shrug, like it was no big deal, because it _wasn't_. "You can get a cab in tomorrow. That way you won't be walking around the parking garage alone at 1:00 am."

She slanted him an ironic glance. "I walk around that parking garage alone at 1:00 am all the time."

He shook his head. "Well, tonight you don't have to." He spent the rest of the ride down wondering what was wrong with those assholes she worked with, if they couldn't even walk out to the garage in groups at the end of a workday. The elevator opened onto the ground floor, and they exited.

"You gonna cater to my chauvinistic tendencies, this once?" Fin joked as they walked, because she hadn't yet agreed to his plan. Casey paused, facing him, her jacket slung over her folded arms. Fin halted too, of necessity.

"Despite some of our past arguments, I know you better than that, Fin." Her voice was soft; her lips quirked, friendly and yielding. "I can tell you know Kirnel got to me today."

That was what he'd figured, yeah. He was surprised that Casey was admitting to it, though. Fin tipped his head, looked down at her and waited.

"All right, truth is I just didn't want to be in those mostly empty offices by myself tonight, not even when the sun was up. Or to be driving home alone ..." she shrugged. "He's locked up, I know. I'm being illogical. But something about that guy got to me, a little." She looked disgruntled at the admission.

Fin shook his head, his hand again on her elbow. He started them moving. "It wouldn't be surprising if we had these kinds of reactions more often, the creeps we deal with. He made it personal today. And you've been attacked in your office before. Makes sense to take precautions."

He felt her arm relax a bit under his fingers. "Thanks, Fin," she said with resignation as he hit the button to unlock his car. The skin around her eyes crinkled with soft self-mockery as she tipped her face up to him. "You're kind of good at that. Making a woman feel less foolish."

He grinned one-sidedly, leaning down to her level as she seated herself in his car. "You're a lot of things, counselor, but foolish ain't one of them." He closed the door.

At her office, Fin made himself comfortable in the stuffed chair in one corner. Casey busied herself at her desk, trying to concentrate on her work and not the man sitting just left of her line-of-sight.

But she typed at her keyboard and shuffled through files without really concentrating the way she should have. Her mind was elsewhere. Why was Fin going out of his way for her? Because it was certainly that, out of his way and an inconvenience at the least. Only days after she'd taken notice of how un-intrusive into others' personal lives he usually was, here he was, intruding. And she had allowed it. Why? She'd been all set to walk out on her own, get back to her office on her own, and spend the night the way she did much of her life outside of work – on her own. She thought back to that moment when he'd announced he was going to accompany her, and she'd looked at him and acquiesced.

That was what had done it, she realized. The look. She'd met his eyes, and they'd been warm and deep and calm, everything she had not been at the moment. They'd offered support and companionship, perhaps even friendship. Rich, dark, and stimulating, his eyes had been coffee, and she'd caved. _Coffee_. She rustled the paper in front of her. _Always has been my weakness. _

Out of the corner of her eye, Casey watched Fin quietly flip through screens of something on the phone he propped on one knee, while his ankle rested on the other one. He was patient, with not even impatient readjustment of his posture, and as unobtrusive in this small space as a man with his amount of charisma and presence could be. This was a very . . . odd, but oddly caring, thing for him to do, sticking with her because she was ridiculously hesitant about moving around the city by herself tonight. And even more, his careful execution of this caring act had allowed her to preserve her self-respect.

She'd observed both obstreperousness and callousness in Fin, at times, but now it seemed to Casey that there was likely a lot to him that didn't first meet the eye. In combination with his street smarts, innate toughness, and life wisdom, this compassion made the package that was Fin an appealing and attractive one.

And _there_ was a thought she absolutely didn't need. Casey shook her head sharply. She had to work with the man; schoolgirl crushes were out of the question. _Focus,_ she told herself. Then she stared at the screen in front of her and realized that she was done; this was the last form she needed to complete.

She saved it, emailed it, and stood, leaning over her desk to stretch tired and cramped muscles. Fin put away his phone to watch her. Feeling self-conscious, she smiled across at him, trying for light friendliness.

"That's it. We can get out of here."

Fin stood too, pulling on his jacket. It was his quintessential black leather, and he looked good in it. The thought made Casey growl silently at herself as she preceded him into the hallway. She didn't need to be noticing things like that. _Hormones – down._

Another elevator ride, another awkward silence. At least, awkward for her; from all she'd ever seen, Fin might never have had an awkward or insecure moment in his life. His self-possession seemed deep and real.

Outside, it was dark and the parking garage was deserted. Casey flashed on Kirnel, this afternoon; _I know people. I'm going to make you hurt ..._ she sternly and dismissively contained her shudder, but wasn't able to suppress the sudden thankfulness she felt for Fin's presence at her side. She was also wondering why those few words thrown at her in court were bothering her so much. As she'd told Fin, this was hardly the first time a defendant had threatened her; nor was it the harshest or most inventive tirade she'd ever heard. She couldn't figure out the real cause of this emotional reaction she was having.

At his car, Fin's fingers were again at her elbow as she opened the passenger door. This time, the light pressure seemed to rush a tingle up her arm and to her heart, which skipped a beat in response. _That's new_._ And not good._ Heart-skipping was not a reaction she wanted to have to a person she was required to be around in an official capacity on a frequent basis. She didn't mind a little harmless flirting at work – hey, she was there so much, where was she going to find a non-coworker to flirt with? – but heart-skipping indicated possible genuine attachment, and that meant complications. She busied herself laying her coat on the floorboards and her case on top of it, to have something else to occupy her thoughts.

"Where am I going?" Fin asked as he turned the key in the ignition.

"I've moved," she returned. She gave him her address and he pulled out into the street.

She let the quiet hum of the engine and the lighted night outside the car window lull her somewhat. By the time they reached her apartment building, she was more relaxed than she'd been since the courtroom earlier that day. Fin pulled up to the curb, from which he had a view of the entrance that she pointed out. Casey unbuckled and put her hand on the door, then turned back to the man beside her.

"Thank you," she said simply, not knowing what else to say. He quirked a softly sardonic grin at her, and it was appealing and she reached a hand out to his arm. "I mean, really, _thank you_. You're a good man, Fin. A good ... a good friend."

His eyes searched hers in the streetlight, and then he nodded once; acceptance of her sincerity and, she believed, acknowledgement of the word _friend_. She removed her hand, grabbed her attaché case, and climbed out of the car. She was conscious of his gaze on her as she moved up the sidewalk and into her building. From just inside, she watched him drive away.

She'd reached her apartment before she realized she had left her coat on the floor of Fin's car.

SVU

SVU

_TBC? If you'd like to read more, let me know._


	3. Chapter 3

Casey rubbed the palm of her hand into gritty eyes early the next afternoon before pushing back from her desk. She'd slept poorly the night before; Kirnel's strange blue eyes had peeped at her from hidden corners in her dreams, and she'd awakened around 4:00 am and not wanted to go back to sleep. She'd come in to the office early, worked feverishly, and as a result of that and last night's work she was nearly caught up, for once. She contemplated this and decided that she deserved a break; not a working lunch, but an actual meal that she took pleasure in eating.

She headed down the hall on her own, not inviting anyone along because she didn't feel like having company. When her phone rang and the ID showed up as 'unknown', she eyed it with disgruntlement. Any 'unknown' calls that she'd received lately had been dead silence on the other end of the signal. She let it go to voice mail. A few seconds later, checking the recording, she heard dead air.

Putting that annoyance out of her mind, Casey ordered her food and settled at a corner table by herself with some paperwork. Half-way through her sloppy, fattening, deliciously loaded enchilada, her phone chimed with a text message. _I got your coat._ Fin. She paused when she saw his name, but experienced no heart-skipping or any other visceral reaction. Pleased about that, she texted back; _I can come by the squad room this afternoon after I'm done at the office._

When, wonder of wonders, nothing urgent cropped up over the course of the day, she did just that. She nodded to Fin from across the room as she entered it; he nodded back from his desk. Very casual, and her heart stayed in its proper place behind her ribs; all good. She stopped to check in with Captain Cragen about details of an appeal that was in progress for one of his old collars, based on supposed faulty police procedure. He addressed her concerns and she was soon ready to leave. She stopped at Fin's desk on her way out.

He greeted her with a short, nonverbal tip of his chin. She'd decided that the way she'd been feeling toward him last night had been purely about the situation - he'd been gallant and protective, and she'd reacted to it. Now believing that her equilibrium around him had been restored, she leaned a thigh on his desk as she often did while they chatted, she and he and Munch. After a moment Fin opened his desk drawer and pulled out an opaque plastic bag. He handed it to her, and she took it with a small quirk of her lip.

"Thanks," she told him, and meant both the return of her coat and his discreetness in packaging her clothing before giving it back to her in front of a room full of inquisitive cops. Maybe she should have even asked him to keep it in his locker and give it to her there. But then he might have thought that _she_ thought that they had something to hide, which she didn't want him thinking, because they certainly didn't. Have anything to hide. And she didn't think they did.

_You're _over-_thinking, Casey. Quit it._

"When I'm stressed", she told him, to explain having left the coat in his car, "my memory gets a little faulty."

Fin's mouth quirked at her statement as he leaned back casually in his chair. But when she met his hooded eyes, there was that coffee richness again, and her heart kicked a little. _Damn._

"No problem," he returned, urban and urbane, and Casey stood there for a moment before she realized she had nothing else to say and there was yet another awkward silence between them. _Got to stop making those._

Casey left, and Fin picked up the phone to call the next on a list of Mexican restaurants through which he was working. Munch was eyeing him from across their desks; a classic, chin tucked, over-the-top-of-the-glasses eyeing. Fin made some rather unnecessary notes and swung directly from that call to the next. That took him to the end of his list, though, and really of anything he could do on the current case without his partner.

"So what was that about?" Munch demanded inquisitively just as Fin logged onto his computer to pretend to finish a report.

"What was what about?" Fin kept his eyes on his screen.

"You. Our illustrious ADA. Mysterious packages?" Munch let his voice trail off meaningfully as he waved a hand over his shoulder in the direction Casey had gone.

Fin shrugged. "She misplaced her coat and I found it. Nothing 'mysterious' about it." He asserted this last with a tone of finality, to get Munch to drop it. Munch directed his patented 'I'm-skeptical-of-every-word-coming-out-of-your-mouth' look at his partner, but he did drop the subject.

That evening Casey left work well before the sun went down. She was early enough to experience rush hour traffic for the first time since she could remember. This way, though, it was still light out when she got home, and she grudgingly admitted to herself as she locked her door behind her that that had been her goal.

She didn't know this side of herself, this tremulousness. Today she'd literally jumped at a shadow when she walked past a sketchy ally. And there had been a man, hunched into a hoodie, who seemed to stare at her from across the sidewalk. She hadn't been able to see his face, and it wasn't like men hadn't stared at her before on the street. But this guy's regard had brought the hair on her arms to attention, and she'd moved to re-enter her office building until he shuffled away.

She wasn't sure what to do with these reactions except what she had been doing: ignoring them, hiding them. But pretending she was fine hadn't been very convincing; at least not to herself. And oddly, not to Fin.

She pushed that last thought out of her head.

Another of those 'unknown' calls popped up on her phone while she was getting ready for bed. She called the service carrier and reported it, but they weren't able to find a problem with her cell.

"Just ignore them," the rather snotty tech told her. "You don't have to answer every call, you know."

"That's what I've been doing," Casey retorted. "But I'm an ADA. I need to be able to answer the calls that I get. I want to change my number."

It took awhile to arrange that. When Casey was finally able to hang up, she went around and ascertained that her doors and windows were all locked. But when she caught herself checking the front door once more, she stopped short. Forcing herself to go and brush her teeth instead, she stood in front of her bathroom mirror in her pajamas. She stared at her own face, first frowning, and then glaring.

"Suck it up," she told the reflection brusquely. "Just ... suck it up." A few weird phone calls and a guy yelling at her in court shouldn't be having this effect on her. Tomorrow, she determined, there would be no running home before dark.

Her little self-lecture seemed to work. That night was better; she awoke fairly rested and feeling more like herself. Because of this, she found she hadn't been as good at hiding her feelings the past few days as she'd hoped; two people at the office remarked on how rested she looked.

Later in the day she had to visit the SVU squad room, bringing over a warrant and then staying to discuss an upcoming arraignment with Olivia. She was leaning against the edge of Fin's vacant desk as she did so, arms crossed and in the middle of saying something when it dawned on her how often she did this; stood right here, in this exact spot. Even if she was interacting with one of the other detectives, she tended to physically plant herself in Fin's vicinity. She wondered how long she had been doing that.

" - so we can get going." Olivia unfolded her arms and swung around to grab her jacket from the back of her chair. Casey blinked, realizing she'd missed the majority of whatever the other woman had said.

"Uh ..." She watched as Olivia moved toward the hall, then turned to look at her expectantly.

"You coming?"

"Am I?" Casey returned, finding a latent humor in her own befuddlement. "Sorry, Olivia, I zoned out there for a moment."

Olivia walked back to her. "You OK? You have been a little out of it, these past few days."

Great, so everyone had noticed. And here came Fin from wherever he'd been, just in time to catch Olivia's statement. She did _not_ need any more of that man's covertly assessing looks. She began to bristle, ready to repulse any overtures; but he just surveyed Casey's face and though she saw his eyes slit slightly, he didn't say anything. Grateful to him for that, she brushed off Olivia's concern and rushed her out the door to wherever they were going.

For the past few days Casey felt she'd been letting her irrational new anxiety run her, what with leaving work in time to get home before the sun went down and letting Fin drive her to the office and then home that one time. It was time this stopped, and pretense at being fine wasn't working. So that evening after leaving the office, she refused the impulse to head home before it got dark. She instead went deliberately to the nearby cops-n-lawyers bar. A few acquaintances from work were there before her, and waved her into their back corner booth. Her drink had only just arrived when they were ready to leave, but she stayed where she was, not really in the mood to talk to anyone.

When Fin came alone through the bar's door, he didn't see her right away. He ordered a drink from the bar and was looking around while waiting for it when he caught sight of the ADA. She was tucked into the corner of a corner booth, all by herself, at the darker end of the room. Something about her snagged his attention; the extra-firm set of her shoulders, maybe, or the way she was staring – no, glaring – down at her mostly-full mug. _She looks like she wants to be left alone_, he thought, but then he gathered up the mug the bartender handed him and walked over to her.

"That drink must have done you bodily harm," he observed from beside her bench seat. She blinked up at him from a semi-reclined position, and a half-smile ghosted across her mouth.

"Hey, Fin. How's it going?"

"OK." He cocked his head at the seat across from her. "Want company?"

Casey waggled a hand back and forth. "I'm afraid I'm not great company right now, but if you want to risk it, go ahead."

Chuckling, Fin seated himself. "Rough day?" he ventured.

"Actually, not so much," Casey mused in a puzzled tone. "Which lately, is rare. I got in to the office early. I got loads of work done. None of my decisions blew up in my face, and I even had time for a decent lunch to myself."

Fin nodded. "So the reason you're in here treating that drink like it raped your puppy is . . . ?"

Casey had just been lifting her glass to her lips, and she snorted into it with surprise. He'd elicited a genuine smile. Fin relaxed back in his seat, rather disproportionately pleased about that.

"Considering what we both do for a living, that was ..." Casey shook her head. "I don't know. Wrong."

Fin cocked his half-grin, half-smirk at her, and took a drink. He wasn't overlooking the fact that she'd avoided his question. But if she didn't want to talk, that was her choice, and he wouldn't push her. It had been pushy enough to come over here when she had been putting out such heavy do-not-approach vibes. But she wasn't sending them out now. Instead, she was leaning into the table with a sigh.

"Want me to make an arrest?" Fin offered. Casey shot him a confused look, and he pointed at her drink. "Of the perp."

Casey's smile was wider, now, as she looked down at her glass. "Well," she prevaricated, tilting it so the amber liquid swirled, "the evidence is kind of slim. I'm not sure we could make the charges stick in court."

Fin shrugged. "But we could get him into interrogation, sweat it out of him. Look, he's sweating already." Casey snorted. He leaned in closer. "I'm pretty good at interrogation, you know."

"Yeah, I've noticed that a time or two." Casey looked down again, tracing the condensation down the side of the glass. Slowly she let herself be sucked in by Fin's teasing. It wasn't something he did often – or that she could remember, ever - and she wondered at its cause. "He does look like he'd give it up easy, doesn't he?"

"Yup. I foresee one problem, though," he observed matter-of-factly.

She stared at him with her eyebrows raised expectantly.

"We'd need some really tiny handle-cuffs."

Casey, shaking her head, gave a small giggle. _Mission accomplished_, Fin thought, taking a satisfied swallow.

"Handle-cuffs," she snorted, "Fin, you are a strange one."

He grinned back in easy acknowledgement. "I got no argument."

Casey suddenly tilted her glass back and drained its remaining contents at one go. Her eyes were watering a little when she sat it back down. Fin's brows were up, now.

"Getting out of here? Decide you couldn't stand talking to me anymore?"

"You know that's not it," she gently chided. "I'll get another. I'm here for at least . . twenty more minutes." She nodded out the window across the room. "Then I'll be heading home."

Fin glanced out, too. "In twenty more minutes, it'll be dark out," he observed neutrally.

Casey nodded without comment, and folded both her hands around her mug. _Ah_.

"That's the point, huh?"

She nodded again.

"Face your demons head on," Fin nodded. "Good move. I can respect that." He lifted his glass to her. She raised hers to meet it, her smile wry.

"I don't think I'd go so far as to call them demons. Monsters, maybe."

"Monsters are less scary than demons?"

Casey quirked a half-grin. "To a good Catholic girl? Definitely."

Fin lifted his chin in wry acknowledgement.

There was quiet for a bit after that, something new between them in that it wasn't one of the awkward silences of the past few days. And in the normal run of things, there were always words in any air they shared; explanations, theories, plans, the occasional accusation. Or if they were here at the bar, they were surrounded by friends and co-workers and _their_ words. Now, though, time passed; their bill arrived; and neither stirred or said much.

Of course, even comfortable silences can only last so long, without becoming uncomfortable. Fin wasn't generally driven to make conversation just to make noise, though. He drained his last glass, and saw that Casey's was empty too. It was dark now, out there past the bar's windows. Casey placed some cash on top of the check.

"Headed out to face the monsters?" Fin asked, his voice dry but teasing again.

Casey rolled her eyes at her own foibles as she slid out from behind the table. Fin tossed down his money, too.

"I was being ridiculous," she told him over her shoulder as he followed her out into the new night. "There's no reason for that one guy to bother me so much."

Fin shrugged from beside her while he pushed his hands into his pockets. Casey was standing close beside him, and he found himself liking it. He'd enjoyed the whole of the short evening, to a degree that surprised him. "Like I said before," he submitted, "doesn't seem ridiculous to me. Caution is a good thing."

"As long as it doesn't become paranoia," Casey asserted.

"True that." Fin nodded his agreement. He'd always known she was a strong woman, just hadn't ever really given the fact his close attention before. Now that he did, he liked that about her.

"You're getting a cab?" He asked as they stood outside in the cool autumn air. She nodded.

"You too, right?"

"Yeah." Neither one of them had had much to drink, but better safe than sorry. They went their separate ways. Casey stayed on Fin's mind, though; the tension he'd seen around her eyes that had motivated him to tease it away, and the self-mocking set of her shoulders that had relaxed while they talked. So at home, once he had closed his door behind him, he sent a quick text, just to check in on her: _Meet any monsters on the way home?_

Her reply was quick: _None. Guess they're all in my head._


	4. Chapter 4

The annoying 'unknown' empty calls stopped after Casey switched her number. It was a relief, and Casey soon found herself back to her usual patterns and routines. She was at her desk early on a Friday afternoon, talking with Munch and Fin over speaker phone about some wrap-up details of the Kirnel case, when her cell rang. The ID said it was from a New York City jail so she took it, calling 'hang on a minute' into the desk phone's speaker.

"Novak" she said briskly into the cell while reaching for the button on her desk phone to place the detectives on hold.

"I see you," said a calm, even, and unrecognizable voice at the signal's other end.

"I beg your pardon?" Her hand stalled in the air without actually having hit the 'hold' button.

"I see everything you do," the voice, so neutral as to render gender indeterminate, continued. "I watched you at lunch today with that horse-faced lawyer friend."

"Who is this?" Casey barked.

"I think she's into you," the voice continued without regard for the demand. "More than you'd like her to be. You don't swing that way, do you? You like men, don't y-"

"Are you aware you're addressing an assistant district attorney?" Casey curled her fingers into her left palm until her nails bit into her skin. "Crank calls to a city official aren't a joke. Don't do this again." She hit the 'end call' button and dropped the cell onto her desk.

"Casey?" She started at the disembodied voice, and then let her shoulders relax when she remembered that SVU was still on the line.

"Sorry, guys." She ran a hand through her hair.

"It's just me." Fin. "Munch left when you took that call – which didn't sound like business." Not a question, but he clearly expected to be informed.

"No." Casey sighed. "A crank call. Some idiot who thought it would be funny to call up an ADA and scare her, I guess."

"Are you?" Fin's voice was calm, but not easy – there was an edge to it. "Scared? 'Cus if you are, that qualifies as more than a crank call."

"Of course I'm not," Casey replied instantly. As the words left her mouth, though, she saw that her fingers were trembling slightly. Maybe her voice did, too, because Fin didn't drop it.

"Any caller ID?"

"The jail," Casey told him, frowning at her now-blank cell screen. "That's why I took it."

"What did he say?" He was still speaking with that edge she couldn't label.

"Not sure it was a man. I couldn't tell gender. Just something about watching me, seeing me – they described the person I had lunch with today."

"I don't like that," Fin said gruffly. Casey chewed on her cheek, then shook her head.

"I'm sure it's nothing, Fin. No worries." She was not going to start behaving like a scared little girl.

"It's not 'nothing'," he told her, now sounding annoyed. "That's stalker-talk, following you around and knowing what you been up to. Anything more like this happens, you tell me about it right away. Hear me?"

Casey looked at the desk phone, and instead of prickling at the authoritative tone as she normally would, she found that she nodded her head slowly. It felt a little strange, but there was something about what she was hearing in his tone. "I hear you."

"I mean it," he pressed, as though he didn't quite buy her acceptance of his concern. Suddenly she recognized it. _Protection_. That was protectiveness, the edge she was hearing when he spoke. Something inside her softened dangerously as she identified the sound.

"I do too," she told him, and had to clear her throat to rid her own voice of an odd huskiness.

When Fin hung the phone up, he was frowning. Despite Casey's insistence that the empty calls and now this 'crank' call weren't anything but annoyances, something was wrong. Glad that Munch had left his desk so he wouldn't have to answer his partner's questions, he picked up his phone again and had the last call that had come into the ADA's cell number traced. It came back as originating at a city jail, just as she'd said. Hearing this didn't help his frown any.

After that, the weekend passed without incident, just long enough for Casey to begin to relax and believe she'd been imagining any menace. Then Monday morning as she was heading in to work, her phone chimed with a text. _I see you._ That was all. She stalled in the hallway to her office, glaring at the screen, and chewing on the inside of her cheek. Her first thought was of the DA- maybe she should call him and tell him she was getting, if not precisely threatening, then at least disturbing phone calls and now texts. But she didn't want to appear to be over-reacting.

Her second thought was of Fin. She'd promised to notify him if anything like this happened again. But again, she didn't want to seem as if she couldn't handle a little upset. It came with her job, after all.

She sat at her desk, not having called him yet, and wondering why doing so was such a big issue. She'd said she would call; she should call. What was the problem?

She didn't want Fin thinking she was weak. That was it, she realized; to Fin, even more so than to her boss, she wanted to appear strong. Capable. She didn't want it to seem that she couldn't handle her own business.

_That's childish_, she told herself. Somehow, she didn't think this would be such an issue if she'd made the same promise to, say, Elliot, or Munch, or even that lawyer down the hall she'd flirted with a time or to. As long as she held it together and didn't let them see if it got to her, she would be fine. So why was that same desire different – more intense - with Fin?

_Doesn't matter_. She pushed the question aside and poised her finger to call him. Then, changing her mind, she just forwarded the disturbing message to him with a note; _got this text this morning_._ No return number attached._

Twenty seconds later, her phone rang. So much for trying to avoid an actual conversation with the man. He didn't let her get out more than a "Hello".

"You get anything else this weekend, since that last call?"

Casey frowned, irritated that he'd question whether she'd done what she said she would. Then she laughed at herself, for hadn't she just been debating not informing him?

"No," she told him, "this is the first since I last talked to you."

"OK. I think we need to tell your boss."

Casey sighed. "I thought of that". 'We'? It wasn't like he was going to accompany her into Branch's office. "I guess you're right."

"I am."

_Smug._ Casey rolled her eyes at the wall in front of her. "I'll email him now," she told Fin, "and see what he wants to do."

"And if he don't get back to you today we'll call him," Fin said with finality in his voice.

There was that 'we' again. Casey shook her head, but found that the concept of Fin being on her team in this was a comforting one. It meant she wasn't alone.

Arthur Branch did get back with her, almost immediately, and his agreement that the perceived threat should be taken seriously was a relief to Casey, soothing her fears about over-reacting. For the present, though, they agreed that increased vigilance was an adequate response.

"We should notify Captain Cragen," he told her. Casey nodded.

"But please, let's keep it quiet," she told him. "One of the detectives is aware. Cragen has to know. But I really don't want the whole unit bothered with this. There's no cause to disrupt their functioning."

Branch eyed her. "Not yet," he allowed. "Which detective have you talked to?"

She'd been trying to avoid telling him that. But she nodded resignedly. "I've made an arrangement to talk to Detective Tutuola if I encounter anything that feels"- she cut herself short of saying 'disturbing' - "suspicious." She hadn't wanted to mention Fin's personal involvement, because it seemed … well, personal.

Branch cocked his head. "You've made Fin aware?"

"Yes, sir," Casey replied, nodding her head professionally while wondering how the DA had time to know the first name of an SVU detective. "He overheard my end of one of the first calls I got from this … caller." She hadn't quite reconciled herself to calling him, or her, a 'stalker'.

"All right." Branch dropped it, to Casey's gratitude. He phoned Captain Cragen at SVU and filled him in while Casey listened. Cragen had questions for Casey, then, and a light reprimand for not informing him earlier. Belatedly, the thought occurred to her that Fin might be in some trouble for not informing his captain of her troubles sooner.

"Captain Cragen" she began, "please understand that it was only at my explicit request that Detective Tutuola kept this under wraps. It didn't seem to be anything serious. As soon as it became evident that it might be, he directed me to inform both of you." Well, he'd told her to tell Branch, and Branch had told her to tell Captain Cragen. Close enough.

Once she had Cragen's assurance on that issue, Casey returned to her office. A few hours before she was ready to leave, Fin phoned her.

"I checked the visitor log for Kirnel in the past few days, to see if any of them might have been down at the jail when you got that call. There was nothing. He did see his lawyer yesterday, but that was all, and I can't make a connection to the jail through that guy."

"Thanks for checking," Casey answered, not needing to question why he'd gone right to Kirnel as a suspect. "I didn't think it'd be that easy. Hey, also, I was wondering how anyone got hold of my cell number." With Fin's statement that he'd see what he could find out, she hung up. She put in a normal day, meaning it was late when she got home. She kept determinedly to her normal routine there, too, making a few calls to friends for casual conversation, cooking up a quick meal, and eating it in front of the TV. After the clock hit midnight, she headed to a shower and then bed. She was climbing between the covers when her phone signaled a text. She frowned at it from the bed. If it was important – i.e., the office – they'd call, not text. Reluctantly, she reached out to the stand and picked the cell up.

Her heart lightened when she saw Fin's name as the sender.

_Just checking. You all right tonight?_

She stared at the luminous screen, caught somehow by the consideration and care the question conveyed. _Are you all right?_ The words offered ... offered what exactly? Comfort, she found; unexpected but certain. It was soothing to know he was out there thinking of her, even if just for a moment, and cared enough to check in with her. It had been awhile since anyone had bothered.

She told herself that was pathetic, to go all gooey on the inside because a co-worker - which he was and nothing more - expressed some hope that she was OK. But even as she lectured herself she was texting back: _All good, on my way to bed. Thanks._ She had hit 'send' before she had time to reconsider that part about going to bed. Why had she put that in?

And why was she dithering about it? Shaking her head at herself, Casey rolled over and pulled the covers up to her ears.

_SVU_

_SVU_

_SVU_

Days went by again, with no odd calls. She shook her head when Branch questioned her about it. But this time, she wasn't able to relax as completely as she had during the previous lull; she knew that something was coming, and the longer the time stretched since the last incident the more tense she felt. She also sensed herself growing angry. Fear became less and less of a factor in her thoughts about whoever was harassing her, as her belligerence grew. She was tired of being a target. She wanted to do ... something, and the untapped energy was making her restless.

Oddly enough, when the stalker (as she reluctantly came to agree with Fin that her caller was) called again she was in the SVU squad room. She'd been there enough, lately, that Munch had made a teasing remark about it, one that had caught Elliot's attention as he walked past the two of them. Casey was glad Fin hadn't been around to hear it.

He was here today, though. She was leaning on the side of his desk when she pulled out her vibrating cell. She frowned at the 'unknown' on the screen, debating letting it go to voice mail. But she wanted to talk to the bastard, whoever it was. She wanted to get them off her back.

"Novak," she snapped into the receiver, and at her tone Fin glanced up from the file he was pouring over. So did Elliot, who was a few feet away talking to another detective. Casey spared their glances a brief smile, trying to look casual, and then headed back toward the lockers and relative privacy. She knew she'd been unsuccessful at projecting nonchalance when Fin rose from his desk and followed her. He managed casual a lot better than she did, but not well enough; Casey could feel that there were eyes following them. Her anxiety let her ignore that for now.

"Had a good week, didn't you?" murmured the unisex voice she recalled from before. The sound sent a small shudder down her spine. She reached the locker room, and Fin was directly behind her on his own phone. Getting a trace, she assumed. "A date. Fiorelli's must be a favorite, you tend to head there for a lot of first dates."

Casey swallowed. How long had this person been watching her? She'd only had two first dates in the past month. But they'd both been at Fiorelli's, so maybe it was just a good guess. She said so, aloud. There was a chuckle from the other end. A step sounded behind her and then she could feel Fin's bulk at her side, warm and solid, good. His presence helped her to firm her spine and inject some steel into her voice.

"You really need to stop doing this," Casey continued. "You don't seem to understand that harassing an ADA this way can get you into big trouble."

"Oh," breathed the voice, "it's the other way around, actually, dear. _You_ don't seem to understand the trouble you're in."

That was a first, something that felt to Casey like an actual, verbalized threat. She rubbed her free fingers back and forth across the outer seam of her pants. "Tell me," she challenged back. The voice laughed again. She sensed Fin shifting, moving a step closer to her.

"Oh, so cool. So tough, our dear Assistant District Attorney. That won't last. Before long, you'll know anxiety. Fear. There may even be screams."

The line disconnected abruptly.

Casey stood without moving, the phone drooping away from her ear. She felt cold. Warm fingers with a few calluses brushed hers, taking it from her. "They traced it," Fin told her as he slid the phone into her jacket pocket. "It was just a public phone on 21st Street. No way to get a uniform there in time to catch him."

Casey nodded, made herself blink strongly, and turned to Fin with her shoulders squared. He was standing close. Very close, his shoulder bumping hers. She saw the furrows between his brows and the thinness of his lips, and she met the darkness of his eyes with her own. "It's OK," she said, but she put a hand out to his arm for mooring. Beneath his shirt, his muscles were bunched and shifting as though he were barely restraining something within, something fierce. She tightened her fingers around his forearm, surprised at the depth of gratification that was stirred in her by that evidence of his concern. "If it keeps happening, we'll figure out who it is and catch them. I'm not worried about that."

Fin narrowed his eyes appraisingly into hers. The room abruptly seemed very close.

"Yeah," he said, reaching his free arm to give her what was surely meant to be a comradely pat on the shoulder. Once his palm met the material of her suit, though, it stayed, and his fingers curled around her there. His warmth enveloped her, they were standing so near to each other, and the core coolness that the call had created in Casey's soul was chased away in an instant.

Neither one of them was moving. _Why aren't we moving?_ Casey's mouth was dry.

From the doorway, someone cleared his throat. Casey startled and Fin swung around, effectively separating the two of them. The cold started to seep in once more, but then Fin looked back to her, and that somehow helped warm her back up. He dipped his head in Munch's direction while holding her gaze, silently asking if she wanted his partner in the loop. He understood her small, negative head twist and nodded back, though he didn't look particularly happy about it.

Munch was eying this wordless exchange with overt speculation. Casey felt a rush of heat to her cheeks, and the cold was chased off again for the moment, but this time by discomfort. What had their stance looked like from his angle? Please God let him not think they'd been in an embrace, or anything like that. Those were rumors she didn't need to have flying around the squad.

Fin apparently felt the same, because he moved to the doorway and herded his partner out of the room. Casey took a moment – well, two – and then followed. Munch frowned at her from where he stood listening to Fin, but the two men seemed to legitimately have a case to discuss, and they were well wrapped up in that when Casey slipped quietly out of the squad room. Fin didn't glance her way once.

She rode the elevator down feeling a little . . . well, desolate. And annoyed with herself for it. Fin was a co-worker. That was how it should stay, and he felt the same way. She was sure. Well, pretty sure.

So she was surprised when she got a text from him the next day, on her way back to her office from a meeting. Trying to ignore the ridiculous dancing sensation that started in her chest at the sight of his name on the screen, she opened the message. _We didn't catch a new case today, so I'm hoping to finish up at a decent time for once. Want to meet me at the bar?_

Casey paused where she was in the middle of the sidewalk, looking down at the small screen. She pulled the side of her cheek between her teeth. After her reaction to Fin yesterday, she wasn't so sure that meeting him after hours was a good plan. But 'the bar' meant the same one they'd been in a few nights ago. She'd been there before, in the company of SVU detectives – in the company of Fin, for Pete's sake. She reviewed that evening three nights ago in her mind. Fin had been concerned, and offered himself as a friend – that was all. Nothing complicated. Why should she deny herself the company of a person she enjoyed? Re-reading his text message and its casual air, she sent back an affirmative. She was being ridiculous; if Fin knew what had been going through her mind, he'd be amused.

Or annoyed, maybe. Did he even date white women?

_Doesn't matter_, she reminded herself hastily. _We're not going there. _

But she would meet him at the bar. And she was looking forward to it.


	5. Chapter 5

Casey pushed through the door of the bar a little after 6:00pm, scanning the softly-lit room for Fin. He was at the bar, speaking with the bartender. She walked over to slide onto the empty seat beside him. When he turned his head, she met his gaze with the ease of long acquaintance. _See_? she said sternly to the side of her psyche that lately seemed inexplicably hormone-driven. _Just be normal. Don't think about any of his … assets. Like his goatee. Or his hands. You'll be fine._

She was determined to make it fine, even though once the thought of his hands occurred to her she had a little difficulty shoving it aside. He had good hands, Fin did.

Fin nodded over his shoulder at a corner.

"How about we get a booth and eat something?" He suggested.

Casey nodded, and after ordering drinks and burgers, they sat and talked. Conversation came without difficulty, and Casey began to feel rather stupid for her earlier trepidation. It was just a drink and some food, after all, nothing she hadn't done before. They were co-workers, they got along well, nothing could be more normal. After a bit, she found herself relaxed enough that the day's troubles seemed to recede; Fin was good to talk to, so opinionated and yet at the same time so even-keeled. His cynical world-view was leavened with a rough compassion that she had to admit she was admiring more and more. They fell easily to talking about previous cases, and eventually found themselves musing aloud over human nature.

"I heard somewhere that a run-of-the-mill cop and your common criminal have psych profiles that match pretty closely," Fin observed.

Casey wrinkled her nose. Her elbows were on the table, her chin in her hand.

"I guess I can see that, in some ways. You'd have to be able to think like one to have any hope of catching one, right? Of course, I don't want to think we're that similar, the good guys and the bad guys. But …" Fin raised his brow questioningly, so she continued. "We draw these lines to define ourselves, and we believe it's us and them, they're monsters and we're normal, we could never behave like they do. But sometimes - " she frowned down at a scratch gouged into the tabletop. "Sometimes I think what I'd like to do to some of these perps, in my darker moments, you know? And it's pretty … dark. And times like that, I think that all of us are capable of anything, or any of us are capable of everything. Or, or something. It's maybe not much that separates us from them, at all."

"Choices." Fin leaned in to the table, too. She lifted her gaze to see the dim lighting cast shadows over the side of his face that was to the wall.

"What?" She cocked her head quizzically.

"_Choices_ separate us from them." His face was emphatic. "Yeah, at some point some people twist from the pressure of shitty childhoods, or traumatic experiences. But plenty of other people have it just as bad and don't end up psychos." He hitched his shoulders in a measured shrug. "And yeah, maybe serial killers are born without some important part of what normal people have – could be their genes are screwed up. But I bet there are other people, born with the same genetic condition, or whatever, who get along their whole life without ever killing anyone. Somewhere, every person just . . . makes a choice. Usually a series of them."

Casey stared at him. "That sounds so ... simplistic."

Fin took a swallow. "What's simplistic about it? Choosing to do the right thing – repeatedly, cuz like I said it's usually a whole set of decisions –most times, that's choosing to do the hard thing. The thing that's gonna complicate your life. The thing that will keep you from pleasure, money, fame, power", he shrugged, "whatever."

She grinned at him, finding enjoyment in their discussion and just in being here with him, an intelligent guy who'd given some real thought to life and humanity. "So the way to keep on the straight and narrow is to consistently do whatever it is you don't want to do."

He narrowed his eyes at her briskly teasing tone, then grinned back grudgingly. "I guess that was how I made it sound, huh?"

"Yup."

He laughed. She liked it when he did that. She smiled in return, looking at him over the rim of her glass. Somehow, her gaze got trapped in the intent richness of his. Her smile slowly faded as she found it difficult to look away. Without her notice, Casey's fingers gripped her mug more tightly.

Fin was the one to glance down and away, and then with a catch of her breath in her throat she felt him touch her. It was just his fingers against hers against the cool glass. They swept up once, and then moved away. It should have been a simple touch. It didn't feel simple. And there was a hooded flare to Fin's expression that reached out and into her, and that didn't feel simple either.

Casey swallowed thickly. She cast around mentally for something to say, and though what she came up with was inane, Fin seemed willing to go with it.

The night was cool and aged when they gathered themselves out of the booth to go and meet it. Outside, when Casey hailed a cab, Fin climbed in after her. He didn't live in her direction. She didn't comment. When she exited it at her building, the cab stayed where it was until she was inside. And in a moment, when she'd had time to ride the elevator and close her apartment door, she got a text; _in safe?_

Ignoring the rush of warmth in her chest, Casey texted back – _Yes. Thanks._ And after a second's hesitation, she added _It was a good evening. I enjoyed it._

He answered that, simple and direct. _Yes._

It was awhile before sleep found Casey, but the reasons were quite different from the concerned thoughts that had been keeping her up lately.


	6. Chapter 6

Casey began measuring time by number of disturbing phone calls. This was a poor method, as the end of November approached without her notice; but it was also done so subconsciously as to be without volition. That was why she counted it as four stalker-calls, instead of two and a half weeks, past Kirnel's arraignment that the situation abruptly progressed beyond mere phone calls.

She got to her apartment building after work late on a Saturday night. At the end of her hallway, she pulled up short, because from there she could see her door. Large cross-hatch marks had been dug into it from top to bottom, with something multi-pronged and sharp. There were several, frame to frame, and they weren't neat. The lack of order looked more angry than sloppy, Casey judged, as with a tight sensation in her chest she started moving again, walking down the hallway to her defaced apartment.

She was pulling out her cell by rote as she halted in front of the door, staring with horror at the mess. She wondered vaguely what tool had been used. Without giving her choices conscious thought, she selected a name to call.

"Hey Casey." It wasn't his typical greeting. His voice was brisk, but pleasant. The sound of it freed her chest somehow so that she could manage a deep breath, which shuddered only a bit. That helped her nerves. But Fin heard the shudder.

"What's wrong?" he demanded brusquely. Casey heard the noise of movement, like clothing rustling. Leather. Before she'd even begun to explain that she had a problem, he was already pulling on his coat.

"My door's been vandalized," she said. Her voice was steady. She gave herself a mental nod of approval for that.

"Car or apartment?"

Scratch the self-satisfied nod. Head-shaking was more appropriate. "Apartment. I'm standing in front of it right now."

"Anyone around?" .

"No." She heard a door slam closed at his end of the line

"Don't touch it. Lock intact?" Rapid-fire questions. He was in cop mode.

"Appears to be."

"On my way. Don't go in the apartment."

"Well, duh." She rolled her eyes at the empty hallway in which she stood. He chuckled, the sound dry but somehow warm. At the richness of it, her own mouth managed to crimp up at the corners. A bit of her dismay faded.

"Wait for me in the lobby with the doorman, Casey." He hung up. She hit end call. _Domineering_, she told herself as she turned her back on the damage that had been filling her eyesight. In her brain, over the chill of her fear, she was hearing the echo of him saying her name. He was calling her Casey consistently, now. She liked it.

She liked _him_. Entirely too much. And she wanted him here with her. But she didn't want to need anyone like that, and so she told herself sternly that it shouldn't be him, specifically. Any human presence would have to do.

The empty hallway seemed barren and cold, and so did the elevator, unnervingly so. In the lobby, she explained to the doorman that she was waiting for a friend. Nothing more; so when a couple of patrolmen showed up a few minutes later and began to question the man about any non-residents he'd allowed in, he cast a frown her way.

She didn't regard it. With the presence of three other people to distract her from her fright, she was finding herself forced to admit that just anyone's contact wasn't good enough. She did want one specific person.

Then he was there. Walking through the doors with those lines between his brows. Looking her over assessingly without saying a word. Sending the doorman to dig out the past twenty-four hours' worth of security recordings of the lobby, her floor, and the elevator to her floor. Scowling when he was informed that the security cameras were only in the lobby and elevators, not in the residential hallways. Directing one of the uniforms to scout the building's exterior and the other to accompany him upstairs to question her neighbors.

Casey stood quietly, breathing easily, for the few moments all of this took. There was a time she'd have demanded to be in charge, or at least to have input. But from a purely professional standpoint, she trusted this man now. He was good at his job. She'd let him do it.

The patrolmen separated to their assigned duties, one outside and one accompanying Fin into the elevator. When Fin met her gaze again, there was a question there; she lifted her chin testily and stepped into the elevator as well, to head upstairs with the two men to question her neighbors. He acknowledged her action with a wordless quirk of his lips.

Those lips tightened when he got a look at her door, though. The patrolman first took pictures, then joined Fin in knocking on doors. Given the hour, most of the responses they got were querulous or vague, until people craned their heads around and saw the state of her apartment entrance. Then there was morbid curiosity, disguised as concern for Casey's well-being. She met her neighbors' intrusions with a small smile, polite but uninviting of questions.

When Fin returned from canvassing he was shaking his head with a look that said they hadn't found anything. No one heard anything, no one saw anything.

The other cop had arrived from outside the building, where he had also found nothing, and proceeded to dust the door and frame. Here, too, there was nothing, so he had her unlock her apartment and then preceded her in, ascertaining there was no one there. Casey was only allowed to enter after that fact had been established. After a quick survey of the rooms, she reported that nothing seemed out of place.

By that time, forensics had arrived.

"Overkill," she muttered to Fin, as he came and stood near her while she watched the tech at work. That was the first word between them since she called him.

"I don't think so," he returned flatly. Case huffed, but softly. After all, she'd be relieved if the forensic tech found something, anything to give them a lead. So she couldn't honestly object too loudly.

"And you shouldn't spend the night here," Fin continued, in the same matter-of-fact tone. Casey frowned.

"I've been living my life on the premise that this isn't going to _disrupt_ my life," she told him, folding her arms.

Fin gave her a look head-on, his face set. "This guy has now shown violent tendencies, Casey. You know the type. Don't be an idiot. Let me at least take you to a hotel."

_Don't be an idiot_. For some reason, the words – so Fin - lightened her heart, even as she frowned at him for his bullying. And he was right; she did need to take precautions. Spending her night alone here would probably be stupid. So, slowly, she nodded. "All right."

The tech and the two patrolmen had disappeared when she returned from her bedroom with a small packed case. Fin was there, hands in the pockets of the jacket he'd never removed, just waiting. He evidently hadn't felt the need to occupy himself looking around the room or inspecting the photos on her walls. He simply stood there by the door. Like a sentry.

"I called a cab," she said, and he nodded, and followed her out; and when it arrived, he slid into the cab beside her without speaking. She didn't comment.

The ride to the hotel was quiet. Casey watched the city lights moving past her window, and playing across the car's interior and Fin's form. He met her gaze in the slowly blinking green of a nearby neon sign, while they halted at a red light. She returned his look silently. His frown lines prominent, he searched her face; she tried to convey to him with the ease of her expression that she was fine, a little shaken but not worried. He cocked his head to the side and blinked, once. Accepting.

But he followed her into the hotel, and then up to the room itself. As she withdrew the keycard from its slot he reached around her to push open the door. Then he kept her from entering with a hand on her arm.

"Me first." And he stepped around her to inspect the small space. Casey shook her head as she followed him in, turned on muted lamplight and tossed her little case onto the small table next to the floral-covered bedspread.

"Overkill," she repeated to Fin as he re-appeared from inspecting the little bathroom. But her voice was mild and her lips slightly tilted. Somehow, despite the upset of the evening, she was feeling as soft as the yellow light she stood in. Fin shook his head at her, but that was all. She conceded to herself, reluctantly, that he was the one making her feel this way, with his quiet and gruff concern and care. She'd never experienced quite that mix before. It was heady.

It was dangerous. Trying to shake off his effect on her, she stirred herself to see him the short distance to the door. But she was nearly undone when with his fingers on the door handle he turned back to her and said,

"I can stay if you want."

_I can stay if you want._ The words, spoken low and more huskily than she was accustomed to hearing from Fin, hung in the air between them. _He didn't mean it like that_, she told herself in a frantic attempt to be rational. But his tone and stance weren't casual, and pulled her thoughts in directions that weren't healthy for her sanity. She experienced a sudden hope that he HAD meant it like that, exactly like that. Abruptly very conscious of the bed behind her, she parted her dry lips without a thought in her head as to what words to put between them. Scared by the revelation of exactly how much she wanted to Fin to mean … what he didn't mean, Casey tried to swallow. _Something. Say something. _

"Thank you, Fin, but I'll be fine," she managed. When had her voice gotten so smoky-sounding? She tried to swallow but all moisture had fled.

"All right," he responded. "Anything seems the least bit weird, you call. Hear me?" His eyes were intent. Casey nodded, and then to her own surprise she lurched forward to place her arms around his neck. She squeezed, tightly, for a few seconds before stepping back. His arms at his side, his expression neutral, Fin regarded her questioningly.

"Thank you," she said lamely, shrugging her shoulders in a half-apology. She knew he wasn't a touchy-feely person. "I'm glad you're here, Fin, and that I know you mean it when you tell me to call you any time. It, uh, it means a lot." Even to herself, she sounded like an awkward idiot. But he only dipped his head in acknowledgement, and then pulled the door open. She heard that he waited outside while she locked it behind him. Then she listened to his receding footsteps.

_SVU_

_SVU_

_SVU_

_Idiot._ Fin shook his head as he left Casey's hotel room behind. She'd hugged him and he'd been caught too off-guard by the uncharacteristic nature of it to react. He should have hugged her back. Hell, maybe he should've _kissed_ her back. Here in the past month or so, he'd given it a thought a time or four. He wondered what she'd do if he did. How she'd react, and what it would be like between them.

If what she was currently stirring up in his gut, and lower, was any indication, it would be damn good. His offer to stay … he'd have been willing to sleep on the floor. But if she'd been open to the idea, he'd have gone for a place in the bed.

She hadn't been open to it. He'd seen that in her, the question of 'what-exactly-does-he-mean', and her decision that it was a friendly gesture. So he'd prepared to leave, only to be surprised by her spontaneous hug.

She'd felt damn good up against him. He wanted some more of that.


	7. Chapter 7

With Fin gone, Casey began to pace around the room, now restless. She opened her laptop and tried to get some work done, but found it difficult to concentrate. Around two a.m. she finally turned off the light, but it was closer to three before she fell into a fitful sleep.

In the morning, eyes heavy even after her second cup of coffee, she called Fin from her office. She felt beaten.

"I can't keep this up," she told him. "What am I supposed to do, hide in a hotel room forever? I can't afford it, for one, and for another I need to live my life. We need to catch this guy."

"Agreed," Fin told her. "But to catch him, you're going to have to let us surveil you. Figure out how he's following your moves."

"Yeah …" Casey clicked a nail on her desk, and then with a low groan she capitulated. "All right. Let's do it. I want this to be over."

He faxed her forms to sign giving permission for her cell to be monitored. Then there was a tech, who came and downloaded software onto her phone that would allow her emails, texts, and call history to be seen remotely, her conversations to be heard and recorded, and her GPS signal to be precisely tracked. The tech also installed a tiny out-of-sight microphone that could be remotely activated for the listener to hear what was going on in the phone's environment, even if there wasn't a call in progress.

It was just later that afternoon that these measures proved worthwhile. Casey knew when she accepted the call that it was him. If the stalker was a 'him'.

"How was your bed last night?" the voice questioned. It had changed somehow, in tone – become more self-pleased, cockier. "Too hard? Too soft? Hotel mattresses just somehow never quiet feel right, do they? I've never stayed at the Armada, but I imagine it's the same there."

Casey felt something ice over beneath her sternum. The breath she drew in trembled. She'd been in that room, alone, all night, imagining she was safe. And he'd been out there the whole time, keeping track, maybe even knowing which room she was in.

"Have any visitors while you were there?" The stomach-turning voice continued. "Well, maybe you wouldn't have noticed … after you finally did get to sleep, you were out like a light. Sometime after two before you finally got some shut-eye, wasn't it?"

Her breath hitching in her throat, Casey hit 'end call'. She probably should have tried to keep him on the line, but right that moment she just … couldn't.

Whoever was monitoring her cell must have had a direct line to Fin, because less than a minute later her phone screen lit with his name.

"I'm asking Cragen to send a uniform over," he said without preamble. "And tonight you come home with me." Clipped and uncompromising, his tone was.

_Home with me._ As domineering as his words would usually have struck her, at the moment with her shivers barely controlled Casey was in no mood to argue. The phrase and the mixture of concern and strength behind it offered warmth and security for her cold and fear. The person on the phone who wanted to see her hurt _had known what time she turned her light out_. And hinted at having visited her sometime after that. If he had actually been there, _inside _that room, with her last night …

Shudders tracked her spine. "Yes," she said to Fin, "O.K.," and even managed a "thank you." What were her other options, after all? Family? Too far away. Friends? She'd only be endangering them. Someone else from the precinct? All right, so that was feasible. But it might as well be Fin as one of the other detectives, and the thought of anyone else just utterly failed to provide that sense of ease in her abdomen that the thought of Fin did.

By the end of the day, though, that had faded a little. Memories of when he'd been shot had surfaced. Fin was demonstrably not invincible, regardless of how he made her feel. And when Casey looked up from her desk that evening to see him in her office doorway, the worries she had were about the risk to him.

"This isn't all that safe for you, you know," she told him, skipping a courtesy greeting. His lips quirked in the way that made the creases to either side of his mouth deepen. They were almost dimples, Casey thought, although she would never have dared to use that label aloud to him.

"It's no more dangerous than what I do every day," he advised her. Casey frowned. She knew exactly what he did every day.

"Doing it at your home, on your off hours, is not the same," she said.

He shrugged. "There's a reason I do what I do. And if I can't do it for good friends, there's something wrong with that picture."

Good friends. She supposed that answered her question of how he felt about her. Judging from his current casual demeanor, she told herself she must have been imagining anything in the air between them last night.

Fin distracted her from these thoughts by pushing off from where he leaned against the doorframe. As he moved into her office, stride loose but alert, that insidious sense of rest stole in with him. The unease that had been constricting the back of her throat all day was suddenly lighter. She smiled without faking it for the first time since last night, and his eyes crinkled in response. So did those sexy creases bracketing his mouth. Softness furled through Casey's abdomen as she logged off.

She didn't like that it did. And she was _trying_ not to like this sensation of security that she got when he was around. It was dangerous, something she could easily become addicted to. She couldn't have him around constantly. And she couldn't be that dependent on anyone.

"I'm ready," she told him, resigning herself to being stuck with him for the night. For tomorrow she'd try to think of another arrangement, she promised herself.

He just nodded while she grabbed her coat and small suitcase. A friend a few offices down had stopped to get Casey's keys and then ran to her house to pack a few days' worth of items. She'd needed more than the little bit she'd taken to the hotel. Of course, this had necessitated filling her friend in on what was going on, but Casey had talked herself into being stoic about that. It might be helpful, after all, to have the people she worked with on alert.

She wanted to be just as stoic about going home with Fin. She couldn't manage that quite as easily.


	8. Chapter 8

Fin drove an unmarked car from the precinct, and he didn't head straight home. Instead he moved at a leisurely pace in the opposite direction of where Casey knew he lived, watching the rearview while he casually changed lanes and made turns.

"Anybody?" Casey asked after about ten minutes.

"Not that I see," he answered, and so Casey felt credibly assured that they were free of a tail when he finally turned the vehicle in the direction of first a Chinese take-out place, and then his residence. At his place, Casey hesitated in the doorway; she'd never been inside. Fin shrugged off his coat, slinging it over a chair. He gestured her to his couch and she moved, towing her bag, taking in the aura of his home. Clean, if a bit dusty; spartan but not sparse; comfortable furniture. Pulling her own coat off, she questioned wordlessly with raised eyes where he wanted it.

"Just throw it anywhere," he told her. Then, seeing her frown, he grinned sardonically and opened a closet door that hadn't, apparently, been opened in a long time. There were hangers, though, and when she hung her outerwear up he retrieved his own coat and followed suite.

"Well, if nothing else good comes of this, at least I'll have been a good influence," she quipped as she headed toward his couch.

"Matter of opinion," he snarked back. Casey lowered herself to sit, giving a long exhalation. Fin heard, and sent her a lifted chin of empathy. She smiled in return.

"I'll take the couch to sleep on," he said as he put the take-out bags on the low table in front of her.

"Absolutely not," she replied, sinking back onto the cushions. "I'm putting you out enough already, I'm not going to also put you out of your bed. I'll take the couch."

He stood regarding her, his arms crossed, seeming to assess how determined she was to argue about this. She frowned up at him. "I'm serious, Fin," she told him in a quieter tone. "If you're going to give up your room, I'm not staying here. I'll get another hotel room."

"Absolutely not," he barked back at her, and against her will she laughed at his echo of her words. He shook his head, and to her surprise, caved without further argument. "All right, but that couch ain't all that great for sleeping. Don't say I didn't warn you, when your back hurts tomorrow."

Casey nodded. "Consider me forewarned." She leaned back as he left the room for the kitchen. "Any plans for tonight?" she called after him. 

"Nope." He returned from the kitchen with two beers and plates. "Need a glass?"

"Nah." Casey wondered briefly if he'd had plans for the evening, and cancelled for her sake. "I'm fine here by myself if you need to be out doing anything."

"Like what?" He settled on the edge of the opposite end of the couch, eyeing her as he opened a beer.

"Um." What was she supposed to say? That she wondered if he'd usually be out on a date? Casey covered her lack of response by leaning forward to open cartons of hot food. "I don't know. Anything besides baby-sit me." Delicious scents wafted to her nose, and she closed her eyes to sniff them. When she opened them Fin was grinning.

"Smells good," was all he said, and so she wordlessly agreed to drop the subject. Who was she to nay-say a little company? Especially company she enjoyed … a little too much.

The food tasted even better than it smelled. When their appetites were sated, Fin pointed out the bathroom and where to find towels. Casey took the chance for a quick look around his living space while he sat leaning into the corner of the couch, an arm spread along its back. He was very much master of his domain, Casey thought privately. She felt a smirk coming on and turned away to hide it from him. It was an affectionate, rather soft smirk, but she didn't think he'd appreciate the nuances. And if he did, that might be an even worse problem. So she took the expression over to his walls instead, and directed it at what she found there.

Which wasn't a lot, just a few framed pictures. One was a casual family grouping, an Asian man with his arm around a smiling black woman. Two light-skinned boys with faintly almond-shaped eyes bookended their parents and grinned at the viewer. "Nice family." Casey let her finger linger on the wooden frame for a moment.

"Yeah," Fin replied from across the room. "They live in rural Alabama."

"Mm." Casey cocked her head. "The segregated demographics down there must make child-rearing … interesting for them." She wasn't sure she should be going there, but the question of what Fin thought of inter-racial relationships was … interesting. She wanted to know. What she didn't want was to analyze why she wanted to know.

"They did catch some flak when they first married," Fin allowed, "and again after each kid was born. Damon says they had all the small-town crap to deal with. She's from there, he's a transplant from here."

"Hmm." Casey turned and moved back to the couch to sit beside him. "They didn't think New York would be a … more tolerant place to raise biracial children?"

Fin tilted his head thoughtfully, watching as she sipped the remains of the beer she'd been nursing. He liked her there, in his space, next to him. "Never asked. Her job is there, and his was the more easily portable occupation, so he was the one who moved. I don't know. After all, this city's still got its own fair share of prejudice, and there are times when I think it's gotten worse."

"Worse?" Casey considered that. "I guess I don't have the perspective of someone who was here in the '60s, but I've always figured that with the occasional setback, we're making slow but generally uphill progress." 

"Maybe." Fin leaned forward to set his empty can on the table. "But in some ways the gap is widening. More along money lines – the haves vs. the have-nots –but in this country, the money lines still don't stray that far from the racial lines."

"That's maybe true." Casey narrowed her eyes at the carpet, as though there was an answer there somewhere for the divisive problems that years of money, effort, tears, and death hadn't been able to yet solve. "I guess I was thinking more of what passes for approved public sentiment, compared to even twenty years ago. But," her lips formed an ironic half-grin, "there are certainly people who have a different perspective on it than a white career woman does." 

Fin crossed his arms, but turned his torso to face hers over the couch. For a long moment while neither of them said anything, he looked at her; pale skin, red hair, round eyes, thin body, small bones. Not the typical African, or even African-American, ideal of attractiveness.

To him, she was beautiful.

He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. Before he could think of something to say, though, she had turned to look across at the photo again. "I wonder who it's harder for," she mused. "The African-American woman dealing with the small community she's known all her life, trying to gain acceptance for her family, or the Asian man who's a transplant and doesn't have those old ties with the people?"

Fin shook his head. "Never wondered about it. Don't know."

Casey moved closer to him, the movement of her thoughts visible on her face. "Or with interracial couples in general. Like," her hand fluttered descriptively, though he could tell unintentionally, between them, "a white/black couple. Don't you think most people assume it's more difficult for the person who belongs to a minority group?"

Fin frowned, pensively. That hand flutter of hers had tightened his throat. "It's a reasonable assumption," he answered, "since we get social hostility just on the basis of our race anyway. White people don't have that to compound the situation." He watched her closely. This was new and edgy territory for them, and he wasn't sure how she'd react to his honest opinion.

She paused with her head cocked to the side, and he could see that she was choosing her words carefully. "Yes, for obvious historical and cultural reasons, racial identity can be more, ah, narrowly defined for the average black person than it is to the average white person in the U.S. Maybe in a few decades, after we've statistically been a minority for awhile, that'll change. But a cultural identity is still pretty strong for anyone, right? Whatever theirs happens to be. And breaking out of it is still frowned on by many members of all ethnic groups. So …" she twisted on the couch so that she faced him from a few inches away.

"To me it seems that _any_ person marrying outside of those expectations, or not matching their cultural norms, is going to have to struggle with prejudice. No matter what their ethnicity, right? And for the white person involved, they're for the most part probably not going to have a lifetime of coping skills to fall back on. Their learning curve is going to have to be a lot sharper. So I- I don't think that an interracial marriage would be necessarily tougher for the minority person involved. Maybe just … difficult in different ways."

Fin shook his head. He disagreed with that opinion, but he'd never thought about this in quite the way she was putting it, and he'd certainly never discussed it this calmly with a white person before. He put his arguments on hold until he had time to think her points over. He knew too many people who, hearing what Casey had just said, would automatically chalk up her opinions to at best, white naïveté; at worst, racism.

Fin was smarter than that. He knew better than to indulge in that kind of knee-jerk reactionism, and he knew _her_ better than to jump to either of those conclusions. He regarded Casey thoughtfully while allowing the consideration of what they were doing – discussing interracial romantic relationships – to fully sink in. Along with has absorption of the fact that she was the one who'd brought it up.

"What do you think?" she prodded gently.

He shook his head again. "I think that despite the way things are now, enough generations down the line, it's not gonna matter nearly so much. At least not to most people in this country. Kids are already being born all over the place with so many ethnicities in their background they don't know which box to check. Except for a few rural or inner-city pockets, families are gonna be all kinds of mixtures of colors, creeds, whatever."

"And do you think that's a good or a bad thing?" Casey had been watching him closely, as if she couldn't quite tell.

"Well." He leaned toward her, his face animated. With the shift in posture, his thigh pressed into hers. She didn't move away. "Anytime integration like that happens, stuff gets lost. Customs, traditions, ways of life. And that's sad. But it's just how the world works. Families mix their traditions, culture evolves, people learn new ways of life. Every inter-racial couple has to learn to adapt, figure out new ways of being. Those ways are sometimes good, sometimes bad. We just gotta hope that here, anyway, it'll be mostly good."

Casey blinked, slowly. Fin closed his mouth down hard around his last word. He'd intended 'here' to mean their nation, the U.S., and its people. But somehow the words came out as if he'd had a much narrower definition in mind. A definition no broader than this room, referring to no more than two individuals. He quietly cleared his throat and leveled intent eyes at Casey. Their bodies were still touching.

Casey smiled down at her beer can, softly. "You have a unique mix of pragmatism and optimism, Fin." He raised his brows challengingly at her, and she raised her can at him in return. "A toast, OK? Here's to the …" she shrugged. "The 'mostly good'."

He let himself grin, and lifted his own can to bump against hers.

"Here's hoping," he replied with a nod.

There was quiet for a bit. "I got kind of long-winded there," Casey said after awhile. "Sorry to dump all that opinion on you. I guess it must have been stewing for awhile."

Fin shook his head. "It was good to talk with you about it. Good to know where we stand on those things." He leaned forward, putting his now-empty can down on the coffee table. "Understand, there's stuff you said I don't agree with. Say neither family related to the couple is happy with the inter-racial aspect. One person is going to have to deal with that. The other person is going to have to deal with that, plus years of being treated suspiciously and avoided on the street because of a dark skin color. Don't sound equal to me."

He stopped while she tilted her head thoughtfully. He aimed a grin at her, trying to make her see he wasn't feeling any animosity. "But you got a different perspective than I've heard before. I want to think about your points before I show you exactly where you're wrong."

He wasn't ever going to be anything less than absolutely truthful with her about where he stood. But he also wanted to be able to discuss this again, as they just had, without hostility. That was suddenly … well, just important to him.

She wrinkled her nose at him, with a mock scowl, and then laughed. "All right," she said equably, so he knew they were good. He stood to his feet.

"I'm gonna head to bed, soon as I shower. Anything you need?"

Casey patted the pile of bedding he'd left out. "No, I'm set." She stood, too, just as he was maneuvering past her to reach the bathroom. She stayed him with a hand on his arm. "Fin," she said gravely, "I know I've, maybe, seemed ungrateful for everything you're doing, because I've been bucking against your … concern. I just want you to know I'm not. Ungrateful. You – I – you are a good friend. A good man. And I'm glad I have you at my back." 

Fin met her gaze, his steady, hers uncharacteristically soft. He let one corner of his mouth lift. And he let one of his hands move to cover hers where it rested on his arm. Then he leaned in to her, because he wanted to, and because she wasn't moving away. "You do," he murmured, and grazed her cheek with his lips. Lightly. Hardly more than a brush – a test. She shifted her head toward his as he drew back, and the nearness of her lips caught around his heart, halting his movement a few inches away from her. Too close for eye contact, near enough for breath to mingle, he was still. So was she. Then she didn't do it – she didn't tilt her head those few remaining inches. Instead she reached both arms around his neck and hugged him. Again, like last night, but not like last night because this didn't feel as awkward. Maybe that was because he had his brain operational this time, and he put his arms around her and hugged her back.

He didn't want to let go. She was lean and firm but curvy in the right ways. He thought about letting his hands slip down … she was drawing back, though, and so did he.

"Night." His voice was quiet, and raspier than usual. She nodded back without speaking. He maneuvered out from between the couch and the table, and didn't look back as he headed toward the bedroom.


	9. Chapter 9

Casey was awakened by sunlight slipping over her face. She lay with her eyes closed, assessing the quiet of the room she was in. Normally she was an early riser, but with the difficulty she'd had sleeping lately, it had been awhile since she'd been able to wake up without an alarm. She moved her hand sightlessly out to the coffee table for her cell, and then turned off the ringer that she'd set the night before. Five thirty-three. Still time before she had to get up.

Well-rested for the first time in too long, she allowed herself to lie there, basking in the warmth of sun rays on her skin and in the sensation of peace that she had, here in Fin's place.

Soon she heard Fin moving around, and gave thought to getting into the bathroom and making herself presentable before he saw her; but she just wasn't very motivated to move. When his door opened she was still laying there with her eyes closed. She heard him hit the bathroom; his shower was quick. Then he was moving around in the kitchen, starting coffee. Its rich scent permeated out to her in the living room before she pushed the blanket off and pushed her torso up.

Fin glanced out from around the kitchen doorway as her sleep-tousled head appeared over the back of the couch. "Morning," she offered quietly, her voice morning-husky. He nodded in response, wordlessly, and returned to what he was doing.

When she exited the bathroom, hair still damp, he was seated at the kitchen table with his coffee. Another cup sat at the place across from him. Nothing else was on the table. Casey grinned as she took the chair in front of it. Somehow this morning, waking in the home of a male co-worker, wasn't feeling awkward at all. Why that should be was probably something she didn't want to analyze very closely.

"I take it you're not a breakfast person," she drawled as she raised the coffee to her lips. Fin regarded her over the rim of his cup and shook his head.

"Me neither," she told him. Fin tipped his chin and returned his attention to his coffee. Casey felt her grin widening. He had yet to actually speak. Not a morning person, either, then.

The silence was more companionable than anything else, though, for which Casey was grateful after that moment of … awareness, last night. She shifted in her chair at the memory of how close to her face his had been, and to distract herself she rose to put her cup in his dishwasher.

Fin drove in; it had made more sense yesterday for her to leave her car at her apartment and for them to share. During the ride, she could see the caffeine beginning to kick in; but he still hadn't said a word when he dropped her at her office. She was smiling about that as she entered the building.

The good mood was perpetuated through the hours of her day, at least until after lunch. After a quick meal at a fast-food restaurant on her building's ground floor, Casey returned to her office to the sight of a long florist's box and a delivery slip on her desk. Standing in her doorway with a hand on her hip, she frowned at it; there just wasn't anyone in her life who would have a reason to send her flowers. No one with a normal, sane reason, that was.

Taking a breath, knowing this had to be from the owner of the genderless phone voice, she sat her briefcase on her desk with measured motions. She circled to sit in her chair before she lifted the lid, touching as little of the box as she could manage, and with a sense of resigned dread peered inside.

It was worse than she'd prepared herself for, and she sat there, staring, with the box top in her hand for a full half-minute before putting it down to grab her cell. She snapped a photo, and then sent it with a succinct text to the number that had almost become second nature.

Fin called back immediately. Of course. She'd come to expect no less. He had instructions; not to touch any more of the box with her bare hands. Give it to the officer on duty outside the office. Tell Arthur Branch.

She rolled her eyes as he issued directions, but the things he delineated had to be done, and she did them.

As she handed the box and its contents of a little dead dove with a disarticulated head over to Officer Troy, Casey found herself focusing on odd details. The bird didn't smell. Why wouldn't a dead body, even one so small and soft, smell? Her gaze followed Officer Troy out of her office, and then remained fixated on the hallway wall for a too-long period of time.

Blinking, she shook her head slightly and tried to route her focus to her computer screen. The smell of the dove wasn't a detail that should be preoccupying her so. She recognized that it as a probable a stress reaction, but thinking about this rationally didn't help her focus_. It's either a fresh kill, or a preserved one. Hopefully the lab would be able to glean something useful from that. _

Arthur tried to send her home. She resisted, and he let her stay on the entirely logical premise that she was safer in the well-populated office building than in a lonelier residential one. When Fin picked her up that evening he told her that regular after-dark patrol sweeps past his building as well as her own had been instituted. He eyed her sideways as he spoke, and Casey knew that he was expecting at least a token protest. But she was, if she was honest, still rattled from the sight of the decapitated gray bird's body lying limply against the white of that florist's box. And she was just tired of the whole thing. She'd decided she wasn't going to argue with anything that might make the whole mess go away and let her life return to normal.

At his house that evening, Fin ordered pizza. This night they sat at the table to eat, and Casey determinedly focused her mind on small things. Sane things. She shook her head at herself as she finished off her third slice. "That was really good. But maybe tomorrow, we should actually cook?"

Fin slanted a glance at her over the soda in his glass. "Cook what?"

Casey shrugged. "I don't know. But all this restaurant food isn't good for you, Fin. We could come up with something."

Fin shrugged amenable, and so they did. They made ingredient lists from some online recipes and decided to hit the grocery store on the way home tomorrow.

Home. Mentally, Casey frowned at herself. This was not her home, and she was best off not forgetting that.

"You sure I'm not keeping you from anything?" she asked, as she had the night before. It seemed strange to her that Fin was staying in two nights in a row. As self-contained as he was, she'd somehow always pictured him as having an active social life. Not as the kind of person who'd be content at home every evening.

But he just shrugged from across the table. "I didn't make plans. Stop with the worry." He shot her a mock-scowl that made her smile. "I'm on protection duty," he continued.

At the reminder, Casey sobered. It would do her good to keep in mind that for him, this was just about danger that was posed to a co-worker. And for herself, it was about alleviating that threat so she could get back to her life. Her real life. Which did not, on a normal day, include Fin Tutuola in anything but a work-related capacity.

For tonight, though, it seemed she'd been successful in shrugging off the day's fright; in the warmth and quite of Fin's apartment, sitting across the table from his strong capable presence, the threat seemed far away. She couldn't shrug off the air of domesticity that seemed to settle in around them. Both of them in jeans and sweatshirts, the pizza box and paper plates on the table, the relaxed evening atmosphere of the apartment, the crinkling of Fin's eyes and lips into an almost-grin – all of them were common-place but somehow, here and now, were taking on extra meaning.

Casey was getting a little tired of fighting herself about that.

"TV?" Fin suggested, when it seemed neither of them had anything in particular to say. Casey shrugged in assent, and after the plates and box were tossed they repaired to the living room.

"No cop or lawyer shows," Casey stipulated as they settled onto the couch, she in a corner of it and Fin taking up the middle, within touching distance. He laughed, and without warning picked up the remote and tossed it at her. She caught it handily and raised a challenging eyebrow at him.

"Nice reflexes," he drawled, reclining backwards and laying both his arms along the sofa. If Casey leaned back, she could rest her shoulders against his left forearm. She tilted forward onto her knees instead, hitting power on the remote.

"Baseball," she tossed at Fin as a reminder of her extra-curricular activities, while flicking to the guide channel.

Law procedurals, police procedurals, forensic procedurals, medical procedurals. Casey rolled her eyes as she flipped through the offerings. "Is this really all there is out there?" she wondered rhetorically.

"Guess so," Fin returned. "Don't spend a lot of time in front of the tube, huh?"

"No. You?"

Fin shook his head. "Waste of time, usually. Sitting around alone at home watching TV doesn't really get me going. With good company, though …" he shrugged, letting his voice trail off. Casey glanced sideways at him, not able to contain the softness of her expression at the underhanded compliment.

"Yes," she acknowledged, and he tipped his chin. Nothing else really needed to be said on that point. Casey turned her attention back to the TV with an unconscious upward tilt to her mouth.

They settled on ESPN, that being something they both felt they could tolerate. A football game played by colleges neither of them had ever attended served as an adequate if not enthralling distraction until half-way through the second quarter, when Fin's cell rang. He pulled his arm from the couch back to answer it. Casey saw his lips thin when he glanced at the caller id, and she straightened from her half-slouch to listen to his side of the conversation.


	10. Chapter 10

"Tutuola. When? Anyone hurt? No, she's here with me, I'll fill her in." When he hit 'end call' his lips were compressed even further. Casey opened her mouth, but he didn't allow her the few seconds she needed for a demand that he tell her what had happened.

"Your apartment building is on fire. That was one of the uniforms assigned to patrol past. The fire department's there now making sure everyone got out. They weren't sure yet but they think it's your floor."

Casey was on her feet, reaching for her jacket lying across her luggage beside the couch. Fin stood, too, but only to grab her arm.

"Hold up," he said, "no way you're charging over there. If this is our guy, he could be hanging around there to see the results of what he did. You show up, no telling what he'll do. You stay here."

Casey's arm muscles were bunched under his hand, and her eyes were flashing with anger. But he could see, too, that she knew he was right. "I'll go check it out," he continued. His tone was aggressive. "You trust me to do that?"

He could see that the deliberate shading he gave his words made her pause. She stopped and gave the question real thought before answering.

"Yes."

She'd quieted under his touch. Something inside, something male and primitive, flared with pride at the simple honesty of her response. She met his gaze unflinchingly, and nodded once.

"All right," he said, satisfied. "I'll go. I'll just wait till someone's here with you."

Casey rolled her eyes. Fin wasn't giving ground on this, though. "Munch, Elliot, Olivia, a uniform … I don't care, but tell me who you want it to be."

Casey huffed. But she also pulled out her own cell. "Olivia," she muttered reluctantly. "_I'll_ call her."

Fin nodded, his eyes dark. As Casey made her phone call, he strapped on his holster and gun. He felt Casey watching these movements and absorbing their significance, but he didn't turn towards her. From across the room he could hear Olivia's voice, first questioning, and then at Casey's short explanation worried.

He didn't leave the apartment until he had opened his door and let Olivia through it. He wasn't taking the chance that Casey wouldn't just wait for him to leave, and then head out herself, alone.

Olivia came in very obviously not happy. Shedding her coat as she entered, she slanted her openly concerned face at the ADA. "You need to tell me what's going on," she began firmly, not bothering with 'hello'. "And how long. And how you could keep something like this from the detectives you work with!"

Casey's arms were crossed, and Fin watched as she drummed the fingers of one hand against the opposite forearm. Despite the circumstances, despite the fact that he was leaving in order to see how bad a fire in her building was, the attorney's intransigence made him grin. With a head nod, he made to leave. She forestalled him.

"The minute you find something out, you call me. Hear? And you can tell those uniforms that from now on they call me first, not you." Her frown was severe.

Fin shook his head at her. "Can we talk about this later?" He hitched a thumb over his shoulder at the hallway, indicating the exit she was preventing. Casey pursed her lips, but nodded shortly. Fin closed the door on Olivia's "_Tell_ me -" and locked it carefully.

The drive to Casey's apartment building was quick, the streets relatively uncongested at this time of night. When Fin pulled his car, the bubble on top flashing, up to the curb, he was looking around for the uniform who'd called him. The guy found him first.

"The fire seems to have started in the hallway just outside Ms. Novak's apartment," Tuley said as they waded through onlookers, residents, then firemen toward the building. "That's not for sure, yet, but they're saying it was contained pretty quickly."

"How quickly?" Fin growled. They were standing looking up at the building now. There were no visible signs of damage, from the outside.

"Minutes after the fire engine got here. Guy I talked to said they probably didn't need to bother with the pumper truck; the interior sprinkler system had it mostly taken care of by the time they got inside. But they've evacuated, just in case the issue is faulty wiring or something that could spark again."

"All right. I'll go let him know arson is a possibility. Start rounding up the residents who are still here, all right? Hold 'em for me to talk to." Fin headed off toward the firewoman in charge whom Officer Tuley pointed out.

Alerted that a public servant living on the affected floor had been receiving threats, the woman issued instructions to her people. Satisfied that a full investigation would happen, Fin found Officer Tuley again. Only a few of the evacuees had actually left; most were waiting for rides, making calls trying to arrange a place to stay, or talking to the Red Cross people about hotel room vouchers. But they were all disgruntled, awakened from their beds by fire and now standing around outdoors in December in New York City in nothing but their pajamas.

Fin was disgruntled, too, by the time he'd questioned them all. He got nothing out of them. No one had seen, heard, or sensed anything strange over the last few days. "Except for what happened to that lawyer's door," one guy inserted. "Hey, aren't you the cop that was asking about that?"

Fin gave the guy an abrupt nod, and turned away to find the security guard. That man saw him coming, and recognized him as well.

"Let me guess," he sighed when Fin got within earshot. "You want security footage, huh?"

"Got it in one," Fin returned, in a 'you-don't-want-to-challenge-me' tone.

Later, he was allowed inside the building. The arson investigator who'd been called in pointed out to him the suspected point of origin. "Nothing fancy," he said, "no real attempt to cover his tracks. And either he didn't know how to start a good fire so it'd sustain and do a lot of damage, or that wasn't his real goal."

Fin called Casey to tell her that her apartment and those of her neighbors were unharmed, if a little smoky. He hung up after telling he was on his way home, and turned to wade back through the dwindling crowd of bystanders to his car. It was beginning to snow. As he pocketed the phone, a thin hooded figure beneath a nearby pair of trees separated itself from the shadows they cast and headed off at a diagonal to Fin's projected path. Fin paused, the hairs on the back of his neck stirring. That person had been close enough to overhear Fin's side of his talk with Casey, and he'd been lounging there alone for no apparent purpose except to ogle the fire-related activity. Except that from the angle of those trees, there was no real view of the action around the fire trucks. Rerouting, Fin walked after him at a clip.

In a few steps, the person realized he was being followed. His pace quickened and his head began to dart around. Seeing signs of flight, Fin broke into a run, at the same time pulling out his badge. "Police!" he yelled as the guy darted into a narrow alley between two buildings. Fin unholstered his gun, trading it for the badge as he paused at the entrance to the dark space. "Stop now!" He had to wait a moment as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light.

As objects became visible, Fin heard a scrambling sound from a distance. He darted into the close space, only to find it turned a sharp corner and then opened back toward the diminishing group of onlookers. Taking the path the guy must have, he plowed up to those on the outskirts; a teenager answered his hurried questions by pointing away in the direction he said the hooded guy who'd come out ahead of Fin had gone. Fin cursed; he saw nothing that way.

After minutes of frustrated searching, he acknowledged that looking further was a lost cause. He didn't have an adequate description of the suspect, and there were no closed circuit cameras that he could see with an angle on the alley's entrance or exit. All he could do was notify the officers who had resumed their patrol to be alert for the guy's return.

In the early hours of the morning he got back to his own apartment building via a circuitous route, pocketed his cell after informing Casey that it would be him at the door, and pulled out his key to let himself in. The door opened before he got it in the lock, though, and there was Casey waiting for him.

In his cold and weary state, her standing there with concerned eyes holding the door open for Fin to enter was just … too damn homey. Made him think about becoming domesticated, and now wasn't the time for thoughts like that. But as he strode in, his arm brushed hers, and he just couldn't quite shake off the sensation.

When Olivia turned unhappy eyes on him, though, that worked to correctly focus his thoughts, where his own effort hadn't. Apparently she and a weary-looking Casey had had it out during the hours he'd been gone, and she was ready to rag on him now.

"So you knew this was going on the whole time." Her voice was calm but her stance was accusatory. Fin sent her a jaundiced glance as he pushed his snow-wet coat off his tired shoulders and let it drop to the floor. Casey bent and picked it up, sending him a Look that he knew was about his housekeeping as well as being silent commentary on her past hours spent in Olivia's presence. A woman who could be efficient with her expressions, Casey was. He smirked as she opened the nearby closet and hung up the offending article of clothing.

Olivia eyed this interaction with an expression Fin couldn't read. And he was too tired to try. He settled himself in a corner of the couch he'd vacated an eternity ago. After a moment, Casey joined him.

"So nobody was hurt," she reiterated. He nodded in affirmation of what he'd already told her over the phone, and tried not to be too obvious with his irritation at Olivia's hovering. She hadn't joined them in sitting, but was lingering in front of them with her hands on her hips. Rather like a parent confronting two recalcitrant children.

"You should never have kept this a secret for so long," she cut Fin off sternly just as he opened his mouth to invite her, cordially of course, to go home and get some sleep. "Not to mention that tonight you chased after a possible perp, without backup." Casey must have filled Olivia in after Fin had called her back to describe his short chase down the short alley. Olivia continued. "You're not getting out of this without …" her voice trailed off a little as she apparently couldn't think of anything to threaten him with.

"A stern talking-to?" Fin offered, laconically. From next to him, he felt Casey twitch in silent laughter. Olivia pursed her lips, then rolled her eyes.

"Yes," she said aggressively. Thinking maybe he needed to be more obvious about wanting her to go home, Fin narrowed his lids at Olivia. She jutted her chin out in response. Casey rubbed a tired hand over her eyes.

"It was my call, Liv, not Fin's. I didn't want the unit disturbed." The sentences had the tone of having been repeated already, and several times. "I'm tired," Casey added. "Can we argue about this on Monday?" Today was Saturday. Well, before midnight it had been – they were into Sunday now. Fin knew they were all scheduled for Monday's day shift.

Olivia gauged the attorney's drooping shoulders, and dropped her arms to her sides.

"OK," she conceded. "But we _will_ talk about it more on Monday." Casey closed her eyes briefly and Fin heard a faint moan. Tired as he was, that made him smile. Olivia retrieved her coat from the same closet in which Casey had stashed Fin's a few moments ago. Casey escorted her to the door.

"Thanks, Olivia," she said as she held the open door for the detective. "I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful for the way you dropped everything and came over here. I appreciate knowing I can count on you guys."

Olivia let herself smile, briefly. She aimed a more severe look over Casey's shoulder at Fin, who hadn't risen from his seat on the couch. He lifted his brows back mockingly. She snorted.

"You need anything, you call me." She looked ready to go, and then at the last moment turned back. "_And_ don't think we're done talking about that other thing." With a mysteriously significant look at the other woman, Olivia finally turned away down the hall before Casey had a chance to say anything in response.

Mildly curious about the 'other thing', Fin watched as with a sigh Casey locked up behind Olivia. She didn't offer an explanation, though. She looked as weary as he felt, he thought, as she made her way back across the room. Fin's brow furrowed while he watched Casey come. Rather than seat herself with her usual economical elegance, she just dropped down beside where he leaned diagonally into the sofa's corner. She stretched out her legs with one more sigh and leaned her head back, now apparently disregarding Fin's arm lying along the top. He absorbed the weight of her head there while she stared up toward the ceiling, though it didn't necessarily signify anything but that she was too tired to be wary of physical contact.

"I like Olivia, generally," Casey observed to the room at large. "But that was exhausting."

Fin barked a laugh. "Next time you might opt for Munch instead, huh?"

Casey let out a small, ironic smile that Fin saw in profile. Then she turned her head against his arm, her gaze transferring from his ceiling to him. The ordinarily sharp edges of her expression were softened by her fatigue. Fin knew his own tiredness likely showed, too. He supposed that was why, when his hand wanted to curl down around Casey's shoulder, he let it. Her eyes still on his face, Casey blinked slowly.

The ruefully friendly silence between them stretched, and morphed into something … else. Something potent and musky, with a wild undercurrent. Fin watched as Casey's green eyes darkened. His own fell to half-mast as his hand at her shoulder coasted up to her collar line, where it met bare skin. Casey didn't move.

Fin kept her gaze captured with his as he brushed his thumb over her collarbone, then up the side of her neck. He wanted her acknowledgement of what she was letting him do, and with a fierce gladness he saw exactly that in her expression. Casey's breathing was shallow, and quickening. When he reached her jawline, his rougher skin scraping a little on hers, Fin swept the pad of his thumb forward over it, tilting it up to him. Casey's lips parted as she took a deep breath.

His heartbeat fast and audible in his own ears, Fin dropped his eyes to her mouth when it moved. His fingers, having come along with his thumb in its short journey over Casey's skin, now moved across her lower lip. Softly, but with enough potency that Casey's eyelids closed. She swallowed hard, turning her head into the arm that was now indisputably holding her.

"Fin," she whispered with her face hidden there, and though the sound rushed blood to his lower anatomy Fin was able to interpret it. In response, he moved his hand away. It was a regretful sound, his name on her tongue, and it said that she wanted to go where they'd almost gone but also that she thought they shouldn't.

He knew her well enough now to follow her thought processes. She was thinking that they were both of them tired. Their defenses were down. Casey was still in danger, and he was still her self-appointed guard. That was all aside from the fact that anything happening between them, since they worked together, could be complicated.

Maybe worth it. But complicated. And Fin didn't want to charge ahead unless his prospective partner was right there too with every bit of the enthusiasm he was beginning to feel at the thought of … of what? Sex with a coworker? A relationship? He knew which he wanted. He wasn't sure if she wanted the same.

So he reverted to his accustomed sardonic grin. "I smell like smoke," he shrugged, his voice a shade huskier than usual, "I need a shower."

Casey's eyes opened, conveying both regret and gratitude. She pressed her nose briefly to his sleeve, and her lips crinkled upward.

"Yeah," she agreed dryly. "You do." She sat forward. Fin stood up.

He knew her gaze tracked him across and out of the room. At the bathroom door he turned and glanced back. Casey's eyes were brilliant green, the blurry effect of weariness mostly gone. The edge of lust that he saw there instead nearly made him back-track, grab her, and start in on making reality of the lurid and inciting images were flashing through his brain.

But she'd retreated, and he tipped his chin in her direction, communicating that he would respect her choice.


	11. Chapter 11

Casey watched Fin disappear into the bathroom. When the door was firmly closed, she collapsed forward onto arms that rested on her knees. Forehead pressed to her clasped knuckles, she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. It was easier to do than when he'd been in the room. She'd felt chilled all evening, ever since the phone call about the fire in her building. That was gone now.

She could still feel his hand on her. No getting around it, that had been an unequivocal caress. Tingles pricked down her spine at the memory of the open intent on his face. He had held back nothing, conveying his wants with his eyes and expression and posture. Her concerns for her apartment and belongings settled, and her fear of her stalker for the moment distanced, Casey had wanted … oh, she had wanted.

She lifted her head and stood to pace. Fin would've taken it as far as she'd have let him, she knew that. After weeks of wondering if he was feeling what she was feeling, she now knew. He was. And for a few moments there, that knowledge had threatened to turn the desire that had been simmering under her breastbone up to a boil.

Threatened only. She'd kept a lid on it. Barely, but she had.

Reliving the moment Fin's eyes had dropped to her mouth, Casey's fingers now reached to rub her lips. Her hand lingered, and for a moment she imagined Fin's lips there. How would that feel? Sparks trembled on her nerve endings at the thought. Her chest tightened. She paused in her circuit of the room, struggling to recall why, exactly, she'd backed off.

She was pacing a third lap around with the memory of Fin's desire-darkened eyes wrecking havoc on her libido, when the bathroom door opened, releasing soap-scented air and Fin himself. Casey pulled up short at the sight of him. He wore a pair of low-hanging sweats and nothing else.

_Augh_. Bastard. Was he trying to kill her via an overdose of hormones?

He crossed the floor on silent bare feet, and she stood where she was with her breath caught in her throat. He watched her as he passed her, but said nothing. Just nodded his head. She managed a small, polite smile in return, glad when he was past and down the hall and she didn't have to deal with the sight of all that tempting brown skin.

She heard his bedroom door close. Letting built-up air sigh from her lungs, Casey closed her eyes. Then, ruefully shaking her head at her own foibles, she pulled on her cotton pajamas with a sleeveless top, turned out the lights, and headed to bed herself.

It was late. She should have fallen asleep easily. Instead she stared at the patterns of streetlight and shadow on the ceiling for awhile, thoughts from the day on fast forward and rewind inside her head. It seemed impossible to turn them off. She felt very alone, so much so that it was like an ache at the back of her throat. The most obvious answer to _that_ problem lay down the hall, someplace she just couldn't let herself venture. Finally, Casey flipped over to bury her head in her pillow with a groan.

At that moment, her cell signaled a text. She turned her head to glare at it, knowing who it was. Only two people texted her lately; Fin, and the stalker. _I should just ignore it,_ she told herself. But she also knew that she'd never get any sleep with all the possibilities of the message's content running through her head. So, trying to stomp out the rising dread under her breast, she rolled over and grabbed up the cell.

_Where are you?_ The screen read, and on the line below, _Don't worry. I'll find you._

Casey sat up to glare at the lit screen, her heart rate increasing. Out of habit, she checked the sender information, but as always it was from 'anonymous' at the same online texting service.

Resisting the urge to throw the phone across the room, Casey instead texted the tech monitoring it to tell him not to bother Fin, she'd tell him about the text herself.

In the morning, that was. There was nothing he could do about it right now. She laid the phone on the couch arm with a slow, deliberate motion. Behind her sternum, she felt frost settling in around her heart. There wasn't anything she could do about anything, right now. Which was getting frustrating. They were constantly reacting, and minimally at that. Casey wanted to be proactive. She wanted to _do_ something. Something besides run and hide.

She shivered.

With a frustrated growl, Casey pushed off her covers to rise to her feet. Arms folded, she stood at the window for a moment, looking down into the street. Then she began to pace around the darkened room, hoping the activity would chase away what was beginning to feel like a layer of ice on her soul.

She thought she was being quiet, but a minute later she heard the door to Fin's room open. She turned as he came quietly stalking, tiger-like, into the shadows of the living room.

"Can't sleep?" he asked in a low tone, rubbing the back of his neck. There was no sleepiness in his voice. Casey wondered if that meant he'd been lying awake, too. He was still shirtless, and the image of him lying in his bed in even less clothing inspired a rush of heat that flushed up Casey's neck. She swallowed against it, but found that it was a welcome alternative to the cold enveloping her.

Well, she thought ironically, at least she was now distracted from her anger and frustration and fear.

"No," she answered him, crossing to where her phone rested. He was up anyway; might as well show him. She held it out to Fin who'd come, without bothering to turn on any lights, to lean against the back of the couch. She stood beside him as he read the text, watching his face tighten in the light reflected from the cell's screen. She crossed her arms and began subconsciously to run her hands over her goose-bumped skin.

Fin eyed her motions sideways as he laid the cell aside. Then, with a grimace, he reached out an arm and pulled Casey into his shoulder. She stiffened immediately, but the goose bumps were leaving as he briskly rubbed his hand up and down her arm. His movements were efficient and friendly, nothing more. But his back and arms and chest were bare, and the room was dark, with shadows from the light from the window creating mystery and mood. Casey's chest clenched in around her heart. Despite her more fully clothed state, he was warmer than she was.

And the ice that had seemed to coat her ribcage was beginning to thaw.

Trying to subdue the few shivers that tracked her spine, Casey couldn't resist the comfort of Fin's warmth. When he tucked her shoulders under his arm, she turned her torso into his. When he slid his hand up to cup her head against his shoulder, she reached both her arms to encircle his waist. As her chills left, she allowed a deep exhalation to exit her mouth. When Fin's arms tightened responsively around her, she became sensitive to the fact that her breath had sighed across his naked chest. The naked chest to which her cheek was pressed.

The sweet comforting wash of warmth in which she'd been allowing herself to indulge faded. It was subsumed by a spicier, enlivening rush of heat. Wherever their bodies were in contact, Casey felt as though she'd absorbed pepper sauce right through her skin. And she didn't want to be rid of it. She'd been craving it, this closeness, and now that she had it she couldn't, in the moment, make herself turn loose of it. She wanted more. She tilted her head to look up into his face.

He'd been staring out across the room while his grasp of her slowly tightened. His face had been tensely stoic while the brisk motion of his hand turned at some indefinite point to smaller, slower, quieter motions. When he tilted his face down to meet her gaze in the dimness, what his fingers were doing to her shoulder could only be termed a caress.

She met his demanding gaze and she knew her own was full of want and need. His jaw tensed as dark heat flared in his eyes. His expression took her breath. She opened her lips to drag another in, and then breathing was no longer a concern.

Because Fin claimed her mouth, fast and hard and fierce. Rising onto her toes to meet him just as forcefully, Casey whimpered in desire. Her fingers clutching his shoulders, she opened beneath him, with harsh fierceness giving up all that he asked of her. He invaded her mouth and brought life and heat with him. Sweeping his hands down her back, he hitched her up in his arms until her feet left the floor. She managed to get one calf hooked around his knee as he swung both of them around the end of the couch. With a harsh growl he took them down onto its cushions.

Labored breathing, pounding hearts and sweaty skin. Casey arched her neck up when Fin's mouth left hers to press down across her jawline and then to her collarbone. She ran eager hands over the breadth of his back, feeling the muscles flex as he moved. He swept fingers under her pajama top to tug, demandingly, and she sat up just enough that it could be pulled off and discarded. Then there was skin on skin, bringing mewling cries to her throat. There was a sense of branding where naked flesh met. Pressing aching need, driving desire – Casey's world was exploding and she had no idea where the pieces would land. Should she care about that?

Yes, she decided regretfully, coming to an agonized stillness under Fin. He sensed it immediately and paused to try to read her in the dimness.

"Casey?" His voice was harsh and clipped. Casey's back teeth gritted together, but then she battled down her defensiveness; he deserved an explanation.

She didn't have a coherent one, just now.

"Oh, Fin …" her own voice trailed off as something surprising welled. She closed her eyes against the tears that suddenly stood there.

He saw, anyway. With a low growl, he pushed himself away from her. But instead of getting up and stalking away as she tensed herself to expect, he just rolled to lay between her and the couch's edge. It was wide, and accommodated them both if she scrunched herself sideways.

"What?" Fin asked, voice still abrupt. But he slid an arm under her shoulders and tipped her into him. He was offering comfort with that motion, nothing more, and she selfishly took it. Her face stiff with her attempt not to cry – and where had _that_ come from, she wondered indignantly - Casey hid it against his chest. To her dismay a few of those traitor tears escaped, and she knew he felt the dampness. But he didn't say anything. Grateful for that, Casey managed after a few moments to chase them away.

Fin eventually stirred under her; she picked her head up questioningly.

"Not that this ain't nice," he offered, reaching to run his hand over the floor behind him, "but if we're not gonna actually do anything, here, I need you to have your shirt on." Having found it on the floor, he held the top out to her.

Blushing, and glad for the darkness, Casey sat up far enough to pull it on. But as soon as she was clothed, Fin reached to pull her back down to him. The action almost brought those damn tears back.

There was quiet for a bit. Slowly, Casey was able to relax down onto the strong male chest beneath her.

"I'm not going to apologize," she finally said into the quiet, her tone defiant. To her relief, she felt low laughter rumble through him.

"No need," he sighed. "Probably not the best idea, right now, with all that's going on. I think," he paused for a deep breath, "you're scared right now. And I'm seeing you vulnerable, which I know you don't like." Casey frowned, but he kept talking. "When this is over" - his confidence that it would be cheered her - "we'll do it again."

Casey lifted her head, looked him in the eye, and let her internal skepticism about that show through. He read her with ease.

"Been thinking it's just the situation affecting us, huh?" He shook his head slowly back and forth. "I think it's more. I think it's us." The firm affirmation sent a thrill through Casey's core. A small smile teased the side of her mouth. Fin's arms tightened around her. "We'll do this again. We _will_. And you'll know it's real. It's not just the situation. _We'll_ know it's real."

He said it enough times that it seemed he wanted some reassurance about that, too. For some tangled reason that very impression was reassuring to Casey.

"OK," she ceded, emotion narrowing her throat.

"OK," he replied. And it seemed that was that.


	12. Chapter 12

They didn't move from the couch until early Sunday morning light began to steal through the window. Casey reluctantly rolled out to go to work, leaving Fin behind and wishing that she, too, had the day off. However, once actually at work she changed her mind; this way she had something to occupy her mind besides frustrated thoughts about her own inability to contribute anything to finding her stalker.

Fin started his day off by sleeping in, which was accomplished easily; he hadn't slept well on that couch, which was bad on his back anyway, never mind the added complication of a beautiful woman lying in his arms with whom he'd made a no-sex agreement. A temporary agreement, yes, but still a frustrating one.

Despite catching up on his sleep, though, that tension stayed with him through the day as he ran errands and took a little time to catch up with Ken. He decided somewhere during the course of things that it was best for his and Casey's 'agreement' that he be out and away from home, and thus temptation, for most of the evening.

Aside from that, there was someone he wanted to see. After making some calls, including one to James Kirnel's prison block, Fin left word with the patrolmen on duty at his building that they needed to temporarily step up their number of passes. Then, armed with new information, he headed out his door again as sunlight began fading towards evening.

Kirnel didn't seem in the least surprised to see the detective. He sat stiffly, looking around the long barred room into which he'd been led. His demeanor, however uncomfortable, was a marked change from what it had been when Fin and Munch interrogated him. Of course, by now the man would have had no choice but to endure close contact with any number of black prison guards and staff. He'd have been pushed, prodded, and patted down, possibly more. And that was not to mention the potentially _very_ close contact with other prisoners that a pretty-boy first-timer like him might encounter. Fin expected that all of that would make sitting across the table from an African-American cop pretty … tame, by comparison. He found himself smirking, just a little, as he seated himself.

"Where's the other one?" Kirnel demanded.

"The Jewish cop?" Fin returned, the edge in his tone deliberate. He wanted Kirnel off-balance, unsettled, for this interview. If his own ethnicity was no longer enough of a trigger for the man's loss of control, he'd have to find others. "He doesn't know I'm here."

Kirnel's brow furrowed, but he didn't follow through on the racial undertones. Yeah, there had definitely been some attitude adjustments happening!

Of course, it also could be that the heavy table bolted to the floor between them helped him feel distanced from the black detective. Fin leaned in to cover more than half that distance. The prisoner did make an instinctive move backwards, though he quickly halted it.

He cleared his throat. "Why are you here?" He cocked his head to the side, obvious about trying to cover up his stiffness with an air of casual sophistication. In the dull grey cement room with his hand cuffed to the table, it was a ridiculous attempt.

"Yeah, right." Having gotten these small reactions, Fin leaned back himself, leaving one arm stretched along the table in front of him and the other balanced on his knee. He could do 'casual' a lot more readily, and believably, than Kirnel could. "I'm supposed to believe you have no idea why one of the detectives who put you away would come to see you."

Kirnel remained silent, lifting his brows questioningly and nodding.

_OK, then._ Fin shrugged.

"I ran into a friend of yours yesterday. 'bout so tall." Fin indicated with one hand. "Kind of quiet and skittish. Didn't say much."

Kirnel said nothing.

"I didn't catch his name, and he left the area real sudden. 'course, it was dark out, and considering what he'd been doing it's understandable he'd run when a cop caught him."

Kirnel's eyelids fell to half-mast, and he folded his arms.

"Interesting thing is, this very morning, bright and early, you had a visitor."

Kirnel's eyes opened enough to let him look Fin in the eye as he drawled, "that's interesting?"

"Yeah, it is," Fin nodded. "Because the visitor was your cousin Arnaut. Red-headed Aunt Patricia's boy. Red-haired himself, isn't he?"

Kirnel was frowning, now. Fin couldn't quite tell if it was pretended confusion about his visitor, or real incomprehension of the referrals to red hair. Huang had said he didn't think Kirnel was aware of the way he'd both sexualized and idealized that aspect of his aunt.

"We keep in touch. You interested in any of my other relatives who've visited?"

Fin shook his head slowly. "That would be just stupid, now, wouldn't it, when you don't have any other living relatives? No other visitors except your lawyer, either. You're not a popular guy, I guess."

Kirnel's already-strong chin firmed. His eyes narrowed. His Southern drawl was very light, almost unnoticeable. "Approval from the masses is for those with weak egos. A man firm in his identity needs no more than a few close friends."

If _that_ wasn't a quote … "Your auntie tell you that?" Fin questioned, tauntingly.

Kirnel's strangely blue eyes narrowed. "You need to stop talking about my aunt," he spat out, before catching himself and unclenching curled fists to press flat hands tightly against the table.

Fin leaned slowly in once more. Kirnel made a reciprocate move back, leaning as far away from Fin as his bolted-down chair would allow. Yeah, so life in prison hadn't completely subsumed those racist reflexes. Useful. Fin kept his voice casual.

"Except with Aunt Patricia dead, there's just the cousin left. Leaves a hole, doesn't it? Most people with a hole that deep, they try to fill it. What have you been filling yours with, Kirnel? Drugs? Rape? Murder?"

The answer was 'all of the above', of course. And Kirnel could hear that implication in Fin's deceptively calm tone. Eyes slitted again, the convict abandoned his attempts to appear unconcerned and disconnected.

"You've got no basis from which to try to understand my motives for anything, Detective _Tutuola_. No way you could."

"Oh," Fin drawled, "I've got a pretty good guess at some of them."

He couldn't tell exactly what Kirnel heard in that, but the man's hands were both now permanent fists on the table's metal surface. His face was starting to twist.

"I think I know some of yours, too," the convict almost hissed. "You were awfully protective of that ADA in court. I can see why. She's pretty and elegant. A viper under all that, of course, but" – he hitched his shoulders in a short, tight shrug. "What do you care about that? You just want your successful white woman, show her off to the homies, let 'em know how far you've come out of the ghetto."

Ah-hah; there, with all the bigoted crap, the man also spewed concessions. Kirnel had brought up the subject of Casey all on his own, so obviously she'd been on his mind.

"She is pretty, isn't she?" Fin's voice was impassive. "Not really my type, though." Historically, she hadn't been.

Just lately, that had changed.

"Not what you'd use to fill your holes, huh?" Kirnel smirked. "What about hers, though? Filled any holes for her, detective?"

Fin eyed the man dispassionately. "Jealous?" he queried.

Kirnel's teeth gritted together before he consciously relaxed them. "I'll take that as a yes, then," the convict nodded, his eyes glinting strangely, and sat back in his seat. He was annoyed, but also now visibly more in control of himself.

Huh. OK, back to the cousin then. "Anyway …" Fin drawled. "Your cousin; he's about so high, right?" And he used precisely the same gesture he'd used to describe the height of the man he'd chased outside Casey's apartment. "And keeps in touch. That's nice. Not really the same as those 'few close friends' you mentioned, but still … nice to have someone close." He allowed speculation to be rampant in his expression as he eyeballed Kirnel. "He's a few years younger than you, so I expect when you lived with your aunt he'd have been, what, 12 or 13?"

Kirnel's expression was both disdainful and confused. "So?" He demanded shortly.

Fin nodded, as though greatly enlightened. "About the age of most of those young boys you raped and murdered."

Kirnel's jaw clenched. Definitely something there.

"_Real_ close, I guess you mean, when you say 'someone close'." Fin nodded slowly again. "How long were you and your cousin having sex? Did the aunt find out? Is that why you didn't stay too long? And then she went and died. Too bad."

Kirnel was rigid. His eyes were focused somewhere over Fin's left shoulder, and somewhere not in the room. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. Fin watched in fascination as the other man's shoulder muscles shuddered involuntarily.

For a moment, Kirnel was tilted onto the edge of his chair, fists clenched, legs poised to lift him up and over the table to get to Fin. But as his hand raised, it encountered the manacle which only allowed a few inches of clearance from the table. Kirnel's gaze redirected toward it, but sightlessly. After maybe 10 seconds, he eased himself back into his chair as gingerly as if replacing a one-of-a-kind Faberge egg on its golden stand.

"I'm done talking now, detective. Get out." Short, sharp, and grating words.

Fin eyed him speculatively. But even as he watched, Kirnel's face smoothed out, his shoulders lowered. He opened his eyes and met Fin's. They weren't calm, but they were set. The muscle that had been jumping at his jawline stilled, as well.

Damn it. His prison time was teaching the bastard too many new tricks. Fin had no other cards up his sleeve; he'd have to try another time.

With a nod, Fin stood while Kirnel hollered for the guard. As the door was unlocked, he turned back to the seated man briefly.

"You're not as smart as you think you are," he said. It was something aimed at making Kirnel re-think his actions, looking for something he'd missed. Over-analyzing often led to errors. It was worth a shot. Fin swung around and left before Kirnel could react with anything more than seizing eyebrows.

At the end of the day, Casey arrived by cab at Fin's empty apartment. A note on the door, which somehow struck her as more impersonal than a text, said patrolmen were making constant sweeps of the building until he returned, and he didn't expect to be in until late.

_So much for a home-cooked meal_, Casey thought. Then she shoved that from her head and decided to take the unexpected moments of privacy to call a few friends and catch up. Later, with nothing else to do, she settled in to watch TV again. The couch was lonely without Fin beside her; she tried to cast this unworthy sensation aside as maudlin, but it wouldn't quite go away. Instead she found herself growing disgruntled with the man for being absent after she'd grown accustomed to his presence the past few nights. Which of course was ridiculous; despite their tentative agreement to re-approach the whole sexual attraction angle in the future, she had no claims on Fin's time. _Grow up,_ she told herself.

It was late that night, and she'd made herself a microwave dinner and gone to 'bed' on the couch by the time Fin came in the door. She had thrust aside her grumpy feelings, dismissing them as childish, enough to smile in return to his raised-chin greeting.

"I went to see Kirnel today," he said.

Casey blinked, suddenly upright on his couch, sleepiness fleeing.

"Without me?" she demanded.

"Yes," he returned calmly. "I wanted to try to get him on edge enough to say something. It worked last time. But no-go, today."

"Oh." Casey deflated somewhat against the couch. "You got nothing?"

"Not sure. Maybe useful, maybe not. But nothing that points definitively to a link between him and your stalker."

Casey's arms folded, almost of their own volition. "_Definitively?_" Her tone was pointed.

Fin sighed, shrugging his shoulders around in circles in what appeared to be an attempt to rid them of tension. Casey opened her mouth to offer a back rub, rethought, and closed her lips without having said anything.

"His cousin is the guy I chased outside your building," Fin admitted. "I didn't see his face, but the height and build are right; hoodie looked the same; and he _moves_ the same. It's him."

Casey stared at Fin, her mouth open again. This time, though, the words came. "What are we doing about it?" she demanded.

Fin shook his head. "I went to his last known address and it's vacant. He hasn't been to work in two days. I've put it out that he's a person of interest and to be brought in, gently, if he's seen. That's it. I don't want to spook him."

Casey sat back against the couch cushions with a huff. It made Fin grin, a little and one-sided.

"I might be out tomorrow evening too," he said. Casey lifted her face in his direction, said nothing; but there were questions in her eyes. He shifted his shoulders once more, and met her look squarely.

"You're too tempting," he said. And that was all. But it was enough; she understood. When he closed his bedroom door, Casey was smiling.


	13. Chapter 13

Monday. Work, for both of them. Casey hadn't needed to be at the precinct the day before, and could have avoided it today, but she wasn't built for avoidance. She was built for head-on collisions. She knew that Olivia would have talked to her fellow cops, and that Fin would be dealing with all the looks and questions. So she girded her loins and went.

And she'd guessed right: Elliot accosted her the moment she exited the elevator.

"Not a good idea to keep a stalker under your hat," he reprimanded.

Well, at least his tone was gentler than Olivia's had been on Saturday.

"I didn't," Casey tossed back. "Your captain knew. Fin knew. The rest of you knowing served no purpose."

There was some generalized grumbling, Olivia frowning at both Fin and Casey, and Munch eying her over the top of his glasses. But what she'd said was true – they hadn't all needed to know. So all in all, the team's reaction wasn't as disruptive or distracting as Casey had feared. They were concerned, but the consensus was that Fin was adequate to his self-appointed task. They turned briefly to discussing her case; the cousin, Elias Fine, hadn't been found. There wasn't much factual material available for true discussion, and the conversation turned to speculation. This was useless and frustrating to Casey, so it was to her relief that Huang came through eventually with a report about a current, different case. The team's attentions were successfully redirected.

Once what she had come to discuss with them had been ironed out, and Elliot and Olivia left to conduct interviews, Fin met Casey's rueful gaze. "Not as bad as you thought it'd be, huh?" he drawled. Casey shrugged.

So that, too, was that. As she poured herself a cup of coffee and leaned into a free corner, taking a few minutes' break before heading out the door to her next appointment, Casey took a moment to regard Fin over her coffee mug. That was that, except for the 'talk' Olivia and she had had which made it clear that Olivia had found some significance in Casey staying at Fin's house as opposed to anywhere else. Casey had tried to dissuade her then, affirming that nothing was going on. At the time, that had been true.

Now, though … it wasn't 'nothing' that was going on. It was definitely something. Casey lifted a cup of coffee to her lips to hide the smile that tilted them.

"I knew it," Olivia said softly in her ear. Casey startled, to turn and find the female detective next to her and following the recent path of Casey's softened, rather infatuated gaze across the room. To Fin's occupied desk.

Casey sighed. She was caught, and she didn't really have the energy to argue about it. She just firmed her lips together and met Olivia's demanding gaze with her own, steady and unflinching.

Olivia crossed her arms, taking a long silent moment to stare into the ADA's face. Whatever she saw there made her tilt her head curiously to the side. "I'm not going to say anything," the detective finally asserted. "Just … be careful, OK? Work relations can get tricky."

Relieved that that was all there was going to be to it, Casey still slanted a jaundiced gaze at Olivia. "I can handle myself. So can he. We'll keep it professional at work."

Olivia nodded, face impassive. Casey moved away.

Monday night was a repeat of Sunday night. After walking into the apartment and leaving her heels in what was becoming their habitual spot on the carpet just inside the door, Casey got a text from Fin saying he wouldn't be in till late. She took a few moments to wonder where Fin was going, and then told herself that if it didn't have to do with Kirnel, it didn't matter. She wasn't his keeper, his mother, his wife, his … anything.

That last wasn't true, though. She wasn't sure what they were, but they'd felt like _something_, all right, Saturday night on this very couch. She threw on her pajamas and sat in front of the TV. But she'd never been one for just sitting in front of the tube day after day, and before long she turned it off and turned in early. She considered texting Fin and asking when he'd be home. And decided that was definitely too girlfriend-y a move. So she lay back and closed her eyes, only to hear the phone jingle that she'd received a text.

She rolled over and grabbed it, expecting a message from Fin saying when he'd be home. The words on the screen were short and direct.

_Found you._

Not Fin.

Swallowing against a throat that was suddenly tight and dry, Casey sat up. The screen glowed mockingly at her in the darkness. She swung her feet to the floor, poised to hit Fin's number, when the door handle rattled. The sound was sudden in the quiet, shadowy apartment. Her nerves over-reacting with the anxiety the text had caused, Casey jerked in startlement, the phone dropping to somewhere on the darkened floor.

She was shaking her head at herself as she crossed the room to meet Fin when he entered. She moved quickly; she wanted more contact with him than she'd had the previous night.

But the door didn't swing open the way it should have; instead the knob continued to twist and turn, in the manner of someone trying to get in without a key.

Not Fin.

Casey halted a few inches from the door, heart pounding, eyes locked on the moving handle. There were scratching sounds. She reversed her path, bare feet scooting across the carpet, her mind kicking into high-panic gear. Did she have time to grab the cell that she'd dropped? No, too long to find it across the room in the dark. Where to hide in the small apartment? She stumbled backwards through the dark into the hallway. The door handle stopped, for a small second; then a solid thud from the other side came, as though someone had kicked it. Hard. Casey whirled and ran for Fin's bedroom, which she knew had a lock on the door and a land line.

With shaking hands, she slammed the door and twisted the lock into place. No more thuds sounded: but then, as she moved frantically for the phone to dial 9-1-1, she heard the apartment door swing open hard enough to hit the wall resoundingly. And then there were footsteps, quick and light ones, not the reassuring solid tread of Fin's with which she'd become so familiar.


	14. Chapter 14

Fin was drained when he pulled his car into his apartment building's lot that evening. The day had been long; he'd stayed well past his shift, looking for any sign of Kirnel's cousin and trying to dig up anything he could find on Kirnel and what either of those two had to do with what was happening to Casey. He _knew_ both those men were involved. Any damned idiot could have figured it out; Kirnel was giving the orders from behind bars, and the cousin was carrying them out. It was obvious. But Fin needed evidence, and evidence was what he hadn't come up with. He was tired of chasing his own tail, and knew he needed to let it rest for awhile, mentally, so he could come at it with fresh perspective.

As he approached the door to the building, though, his expectant thoughts of a cold beer and a relaxed evening on the couch fled. Outside, lined up neatly on the public walk to the side of the double glass doors, was a pair of beige pumps. He frowned at them, his senses insisting to his brain that something wasn't right. No one left a decent pair of shoes just sitting outside the door of their apartment building, in the weather. Did Casey have a pair like that? They seemed familiar, but women's footwear wasn't something to which he ordinarily paid a lot of attention.

He pulled out his cell to call her on the elevator ride to his floor. The hair on his arms was prickling. She didn't pick up. Further concerned, he hastened out of the elevator and down the hall with his cell still out.

When he got within sight of his doorway, he pulled up short, and then immediately dialed the officers who were supposed to be patrolling the block. The door was open on its hinges, splintered around the knob which had been jimmied with some kind of tool. No one was anywhere around. Nobody had called this in? He'd have been informed immediately if there'd been a report of a disturbance in his building. Scowling angrily against the dread rising in his chest, Fin raced the final steps down the hall, knowing it was useless, but unable to stop himself.

Into the apartment, calling Casey's name and just barely remembering not to touch surfaces that might retain prints, he was frantic for a second even though he knew what he wouldn't find. There was no answer, because of course she wasn't there. She'd evidently tried to barricade herself in his bedroom; that door, too, was busted in. He stood at the room's entrance, trying to suppress the panic clawing at his chest. He could best help her by doing his job. He repeated that mentally while he surveyed the area. Just a crime scene, he told himself. Like hundreds of others in which he'd stood.

The self-lecture worked. Sort of. At least he was able to focus on what needed to be done.

The space was in disarray. With savage satisfaction Fin saw that Casey had fought. The covers had been dragged off one corner of the bed; the bed itself was no longer flush with the wall, instead angling into the center of the room as though it had been jarred in some way. His first, brief inspection found nothing else except that the landline handset was off its hook; she'd had time to try to call for help but not enough to get through. Why this one, and not her cell?

Trying to ignore how his heart was pounding and his gut beginning to roil with sickness, Fin snapped out answers to the questions from the cop who was waiting on the other end of his call. Then he moved, jaw tight, to do a more thorough walk-through of the bedroom.

About three feet in from the doorway, there was a dark brown stain on the wood floor. Fin bent over it, jaw muscles clenched and lips tight; it was blood, not yet completely congealed. He lost a few moments, staring at the spot.

But it wasn't enough to indicate a serious injury, and he made himself straighten away for another look around the room. Just under the edge of the bed he sighted his iPod dock. Maybe that had been the weapon the stalker had used; Fin didn't have gloves, so he left it where it was.

Leaving the room and its disturbing proof of struggle, he stalked out to begin pounding on the doors of his neighbors. Neighbors who'd apparently not believed that the sound of a door being broken down was cause enough for calling the cops.

He'd gotten the cursing in his head mostly under control by the time Captain Cragen showed up. But not the cold dread around his heart, or the heated angry pulse of his blood through his arteries.

Soon, they were all there - Munch, Elliot, Olivia, and a few others under the Captain's direction. People in coats with blazoned acronyms swarmed in and out of his apartment while Fin stood arguing with Cragen about letting him continue to interview his own neighbors.

"No," his superior said succinctly. "We've already had one complaint. Olivia and Elliot will conduct the rest of them." The complaint to which he was referring was from a man a few doors down. He had been unwise enough to make a flippant comment about the NYPD not being able to protect its own. Fin had slammed the man back against his own doorjamb before getting a hold on his temper and stalking off to the next apartment.

Fin opened his mouth to express his strong feelings on this subject. Munch, who had been standing nearby watchfully, finally laid hands on his partner. He pulled him around from his sure-to-be-insubordinate confrontation with their Captain. "We'll go re-interview the guys who were on patrol," Munch said to his boss, who gave him a nod in return. "You keep a rein on him," that worthy advised, and Munch acknowledged the order with a purse of his thin lips.

The prospect of being able to do _something,_ anything at all that might be productive was enough to get Fin out of the building. In the lobby, Munch eyed a silent, forbidding Fin sideways and speculatively.

It wasn't that the rest of the unit wasn't feeling grim. They all worked closely with ADA Novak and were anxious to find her, unharmed. But it was apparent to Munch that Fin's anxiety had a more desperate edge to it. This was personal to the whole team. Every one of them was dealing with concern over where Casey was and whether she was being hurt; anger at whoever had done this; fear that she was not still alive; and determination to find her and the perp and do whatever was necessary.

Munch's gaze dropped to Fin's hands, clenching and unclenching around each other at his waist line. Fin had all of those emotions, too. It just seemed he had them a little bit … more.


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N – I know, I know, it's been over a year and you're probably shocked to see this update! Some drastic life changes have occurred and kept me from this. But here I am, posting this short bit so that I get the whole story finished!_

It was Kirnel's cousin, of course. Elias Fine. He'd beaten his way into Fin's bedroom, chased Casey around, and just as she had nearly made it out of the room's door he'd delivered a blow to her head that knocked her out long enough to be tied up. When she came too, she was lying on Fin's living room floor. And her attacker had taken time to introduce himself.

He seemed very different than he had all these months over the phone. With distance between them, he'd been aggressive, sinister and taunting. In person, he was tense to the point of awkwardness. He cleared his throat before telling her his name, and it sounded like an announcement: "Eliii-aaaas Fiine!" Then he eyed her as if to gauge her reaction.

She didn't have much of one. She'd awakened with her face mashed into the carpet, feeling stickiness on the back of her head – drying blood. She slowly became aware of a pounding pain radiating from there, the spot where he'd struck her with an object she hadn't seen. With the pain came nausea.

She lay there with a low, sideways view of Fine as he bent to pick up the beige pumps she'd worn to work from their spot beside the door. What could he want those for? He tucked them into the front pocket of the largest piece of luggage she'd ever seen before turning back to her. "Your turn," he told her with a hitch of his shoulders that was somehow both aggressive and nervous.

Casey stared somewhat hazily at the wheeled, hard-sided luggage. Her gaze must have been panicked.

"Don't worry, you'll fit without me cutting any pieces off you," he assured her, one corner of his mouth twitching into something that approximated a sardonic smile. "And you won't be awake anyway."

It was then that, with a rush of dread, she saw he held a syringe, a needle and a vial. She had little time to entertain the fear, though, before he injected her with something. Within five minutes she'd been whoozy. The drug's effects weren't so instantaneous that she didn't fight back as he folded her body up and shoved her into the bag – they were just enough that her muscle control was weak and growing weaker. Her struggle didn't accomplish anything.

He lugged her out into the hallway and down to the first floor. She was just conscious enough to hear him unzip the front pocket and pull those shoes out, and to wonder again what he was doing with them. Then she was conscious of nothing.


	16. Chapter 16

_Warning: some minor torture is described in this chapter (if there's any such thing as torture that can be called 'minor'). _

The techs had found Casey's cell phone in Fin's living room. Holding it, Fin stared through the plastic evidence bag at the last text message she'd received. Damn her for not calling 9-1-1 or the patrol officers immediately, after getting that! He could sense the savageness of his thoughts threatening to run away with him, though, so he wrestled them under control. He shoved the bagged phone at Olivia, nearest him, and left the room. He prowled up and down the hallways of his floor, looking for anything the uniforms might have missed. Then he was outside. Those beige pumps were no longer sitting at the entranceway doors. They were hers, of course. Some sick twist of Kirnel's, that was, he supposed, to nudge Fin's fear response before he was even in the building. Elongate the torture.

Torture … he hoped Casey was all right. But he knew Kirnel's anger towards her, and the man's sadistic treatment of the kids he'd torn apart. Fin dropped to a crouch on the concrete walk, head in his hands. He gave his mind and his heart a few moments, to fully entertain the knowledge. She was going to be hurt. Kirnel had cried his intentions for her that day in court; he wanted her to _scream_.

_SVU_

_SVU_

Someone was audible but not visible when Casey began to regain consciousness. When she managed to open her eyes the world was blurry. Something long and greyish, maybe metal, hung above her, hazing in and out of focus. Her first, muddled thought was of those shoes, not even her favorite pair … what had he done with them? She could see them as a taunting message to Fin, somehow. The thought of Fin sent a spike of fear down her spine, slicing through the muzzy fog in her head. He would be so anxious – and not speaking of it to anyone. It would be coming out in other ways. Fear for him made her move her head and look around. Her arms and legs were anchored to something.

She was in a dimly lit grey room surrounded by cinder block walls and cement floors. Two basement-size windows were covered with opaque black plastic that was duct-taped into place. She wondered muzzily if it was day or night. As she slowly became more alert, she realized she had some muscle function back; it was still weak but enough that she could test the plastic ties holding her elbows, wrists, waist, knees and ankles to an ancient metal hospital gurney. They were secure and allowed for little movement.

She wasn't entirely surprised to be still in the land of the living; if Kirnel had wanted her dead, Fine wouldn't have went to all this trouble to transport her alive.

She remembered him introducing himself as Elias Fine. Fin had called him 'Arnaut'. What was the different name about? Were there two cousins? No – she shook her head to try to clear it. She knew there was only one, one living relative of Kirnel's. And 'Elias' … Elias had been the name of Kirnel's last victim. The one he'd killed.

Sick dread in her abdomen, she tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling. The metal there slowly came into focus, with concentration. Then she wished she hadn't bothered; it was a meat hook, the type used in slaughterhouses for large pieces of meat.

Nausea roiled. She turned her head just in time to avoid puking in a position where she could choke. The emesis had no place to go, and just pooled at her neck and shoulder. Shaking, she lay there for what seemed an eternity, wondering. How long had it been? Did Fin know yet that she'd been taken? How well had 'Elias' covered his tracks? She had to get out of here, somehow.

There were footsteps overhead. That was the sound to which she'd awakened. They paused, then resumed. Somewhere out of sight, a door must have opened without sound; the steps proceeded down a flight of stairs. Casey's heart picked up speed, her throat constricted with fear. She fought the sensation by forcing herself to take slow, deep, even breaths.

The pale face shrouded in a dark hoodie was suddenly in her field of vision, staring down at her, briefly blocking out the sight of the meat hook.

"You're awake." He grinned at her, like she'd done him a friendly favor by rousing. "That's great. We have things to do."

_Things_. Casey barely kept her flinch under control. She opened her mouth, but her tongue and throat were dry and coated with congealing vomit and she couldn't manage an actual sound. 'Elias' nodded, disappeared briefly, and reappeared with a glass of water. It was obviously not freshly poured, but with the vomit taste still strong Casey gulped it eagerly when he raised the guerney's head. He then disappeared again, and the sound of an old, rolling metal cart accompanied him back. It was neatly laid with a towel upon which rested various small hand tools: pruning shears, a dental pick, a pocket knife ... other odds and ends. Casey couldn't keep her head from turning to observe as he began to pick up and inspect each one, looking for she didn't know what.

"Y- you said you're Elias." She had to distract herself from the prospect of what his activity meant.

He nodded, and gave her an awkward attempt at a dramatic bow.

"Not Arnaut?" She genuinely wanted to know. What harm could asking do?

His face lowered, and darkened. "Not right now." The voice was somehow that of a boy, not a man. He turned his face away from her, focused on wiping a butter knife back and forth across the towel.

She stared at the back of his head. _Not right now._ She licked her lips, gave it a shot.

"Peter?" And he flinched, visible even from the back; his shoulders hunched, briefly. Aha.

"And before that, Ramon." Both were names of Kirnel's previous victims. The ones who hadn't died …

"Elias must be the worst of all those names, to bear," she murmured. Kirnel was making this kid in an adult's body wear the names of the boys he'd molested and damaged. Like a scapegoat, or … she didn't know. That was so twisted and wrong - she didn't have the words for what it was.

The young man's head had flicked in her directions. Briefly, the eyes that met hers were raw and open. She saw confusion, pain, anger there … and a disconnect. This man, this _boy_, was dancing on the edge of sanity. Too much pushing, and he'd fall off.

So she backed off. Maybe he'd talk, give her some insight. Tell her without telling, what questions she should ask. She was a good examiner. She'd figure it out.

She had to, she thought desperately, as 'Elias' turned back to his tools and selected one. A trowel.

"Elias isn't so bad," he said, unexpectedly, into the dank silence. He walked to the wall and flipped a switch. Flourescent lighting flickered on from up past the meat hook. It glinted dully and disturbingly. She turned her eyes from it to the form of the young man now moving toward her. No less disturbing, but she was far more likely to be able to do something about him than she was about the hook.

"Arnaut." _Yes_. He was bending over, propping a smart phone's lens to aim in her direction, but he reacted to the name; his eyes flew to her face and his cheek twitched. There was something like longing there. "Why are you doing this to me?" Her voice, to her shame, cracked on the last word. He heard. She thought it bothered him, somehow.

"I must." He was standing beside her, now, gazing down at her bonds. "It's for James." He cracked a sickly smile when her eyebrows rose in surprise. "Yeah, he said to tell you it was him. Said you knew, anyway, and he wanted you to be sure who was getting the best of you."

OK. "Why?"

He glared at her. "Because you're a bitch. You pretended to be his friend, to understand him, and then you turned on him. You hurt him. He's been hurt enough, in his life." Recalled to his purpose, he clenched the trowel in his fist, reaching for Casey's left hand with his other one. He held her fingers flat and still against a metal plate bolted to the guerney's rail. Despite his size, he was strong. He fitted five of the trowel's tines to her fingertips, just between her nails and their beds, as she panted in fear of the expected pain; and then he pressed.

Casey gasped, and grit her teeth, and didn't scream.

_SVU_

_SVU_

Fin growled. It was low and strong and long; Munch glanced sideways at him, saw the fists clenched and the shoulders hunching into a martial-ready stance, and moved to his feet to grab his partner's shoulder.

"Out," he said succinctly. He jerked his head at the guard to escort Fin from the room. Fin went; Munch knew that he knew himself well enough to see the wisdom of the move. It had only been a matter of time before Fin did something stupid in here, no matter that he'd convinced the Captain otherwise. The Captain hadn't seen Fin interacting with Novak the past two months, hadn't put two and two together, the way Munch and now Olivia had.

Munch on his own didn't get anything substantial from Kirnel, and he was frustrated when he finally left. Meeting his partner in the hallway, he said as much. Fin stood with both thumbs tucked into his pockets, head tilted, a classic Fin stance; but his gaze was so dark and heavy that Munch swallowed.

"We're worried about you," he said flatly, and didn't bother to explain that the other person in the 'we' was Olivia. He took his glasses off and cleaned them, unnecessarily, on his shirt, to soften the impact of his focus on Fin. "She means more than you've told me. Don't bother," he shook his head as Fin opened his mouth, possibly to deny it. "It's all over you. But if you can't keep yourself under control, I'm telling Cragen that you need to completely distance yourself from this, officially."

Fin passed a knuckle under his beard, then sighed. He didn't meet Munch's gaze. "Yeah. You're right. I'm not an idiot. Thanks for keeping an eye out for me." The last sentence was grudging.

Munch replaced his glasses, and crossed his arms. "Just tell me you're going to be able to keep it together. Or get yourself out of the situation before you lose it."

Fin was silent, looking off into middle distance for several beats. When he moved his eyes to Munch's, it was with a crash. Munch was jarred. The distress and hard-bitten stubbornness there were such he hadn't often seen in his partner's brown gaze. He watched as Fin tried to flip the fear over to anger. It had worked in the room with Kirnel: it didn't work here, in the corridor, and Munch hurt with the hurt he saw in Fin.

"Don't know that I can make that promise," Fin finally stated, low and gravelly. Munch sighed.

"Come on." He hitched his head in the direction of the exit and tried to shake off the awkward moment of emotional nakedness. "A bar and a drink. On me."

Fin shook his head, left then center, just once. "Can't." It was pained and yet entrenched. One word.

"All right." _Stubborn_. Munch knew a losing battle when he was fighting one. But at least they were both walking, leaving the building, now. "Then home and bed, at least. It's been a long day. You're not thinking clearly. Sleep will help."

_SVU_

_SVU_

Casey had no idea how long she'd been in the grey basement. Hours, days, maybe a week? The lights were always on and there was no discernible street noise.

Arnaut had eyed her, as he began to apply pressure. She knew eventually she'd break, no one could hold out against torture indefinitely; but something in her chest made her lip curl up in disdain at the idea of doing so before she'd fought against it with all her strength. Kirnel wanted screaming. She was being recorded. So she refused.

She couldn't stop her breath from becoming ragged gasps, though; or the tears from pooling and then escaping. Moments or long minutes after the pain began, she opened her eyes into Arnaut's face. He glanced down, met her gaze. She watched his eyebrows seize, felt his hand tremble. And then he dropped the trowel.

Damage had been done; her fingers were tight, swollen now, and blood congealed on the metal plate to which her hand was still strapped. She couldn't move it without dull pain ratcheting through her whole arm. But Arnaut had fast-walked up the stairs, out of her sight, and she'd not seen or heard from him since. She'd slept fitfully, she knew that. She gave vague thought to the infection that was possibly spreading into her hand. She had to get out of here. She'd tested the bonds, and knew they were beyond being broken by her.

But the boy, the edgy half-insane boy; perhaps he wasn't.


	17. Chapter 17

Fin did not, of course, sleep. It would have been impossible without sleeping pills, and drugs would just slow him down if some information broke while he was doped up. Munch couldn't have been expecting him to go to sleep. But he tried to do the smart thing, and stay in his apartment. There was research he could do from his home computer; he did it. He went over every possible angle, trying to find a way to connect Kirnel to Casey's disappearance. He dug through every stalker text and recorded call, searching for hints. He walked himself through Casey's probable path from the office to his home, that last day. He reviewed and re-reviewed all the possible security footage. Nothing. There was just nothing.

He started in on the calls again. He kept returning to the one from the NYC jail. There had to be a way to trace the connections from that to Kirnel. He made calls to the prison where the man was incarcerated, for record of the man's activities that day.

And he found something.

_SVU_

_SVU_

"Arnaut." She'd called him that twice a dozen times, now, and he no longer flinched. Instead he turned toward her when she said it, naked, conflicted longing on his face. Conflicted because James Kirnel wanted him to use those other boys' names. But despite his loyalty to James Kirnel, Arnaut was not so damaged that he didn't want to be himself, instead of those abused boys. Most certainly, he did not want to play at being the dead one.

Casey had been working on drawing his story out of him. His cousin had mistreated him, used him, from a very young age, and so warped him that he believed what he was doing to Casey was right. Or at least he wanted so badly to believe it that he was in harsh denial of any possibility his actions _weren't_ right. His cousin/lover had been hurt by the world, and so he was hurting the world back on his cousin's behalf. Arnaut told Casey long stories of the abuse Kirnel had taken as a child, to self-affirm his own morality.

But Casey had been planting seeds; seeds that wouldn't have germinated in the mind of anyone with normal emotional reserves. Arnaut, however, didn't have those reserves. She'd searched within herself and found a subtly motherly tone of voice. She'd used it when she told him that she knew that the wounds dealt his cousin James's soul weren't right, and should be requited. He'd nodded at her in relief, glad that she 'understood'. He'd released her right arm from both its ties long enough for her to feed herself. She hadn't protested when he replaced them; she'd given him a small, softly resigned smile for which he'd seemed pathetically grateful.

He tried again with the pain. He left the bright fluorescent lighting off for this go-round; perhaps he thought he could handle her hurt better if he could not so well see what he was doing. This time it was a hammer, to her right little toe. The toe broke, and Casey couldn't help herself; this time she did scream. She screamed, and then broke off into fast, rapid animal whimpers. "Why?" she moaned to Arnaut. He shook his head, visibly trembling as he dropped the hammer onto her mattress. "For James," he whispered.

"For James?" she managed to reply, gasping around the pain emanating from her foot. "What did I ever really do to James, Arnaut? He hurt boys. Boys like you who had done nothing to him. And I helped to stop him from doing it again. I put him someplace that locked, so that other boys would be safe from him.

"I didn't do it alone, Arnaut. But it's me he hates. Not the cops who arrested him or the guards who keep him there now. Just me. Why, do you think?"

He didn't have an answer. It was in his face, confusion, as he stared at her. Confusion and, beneath it, fear that she was right.

"I think it's you who deserves justice here, Arnaut. Not James. Perhaps he loves you" – because no amount of talking had been able to convince him that his older cousin didn't love him "- but he's confused. He's sick in his head. He needs help, because people who love each other in healthy ways don't make their lovers do these kinds of things. Why is James having you do it?"

"Because he can't," Arnaut whispered. Briefly and terrifyingly, he glowered at her. "Because he's where you put him. I do this freely. Because I love him!"

Casey stared up at him, feeling the weight of the hammer at her right thigh lying where he'd dropped it. "Don't you think it would be better," she breathed, "if he could do it himself?"

He picked at his lower lip, staring, clearly suspecting a trick. But he couldn't find one. "What do you mean?"

Casey breathed deeply, calmingly. For him, and for herself. "James would really know how much you love him, if you made it possible for him to be here in person. He's going to be in prison for such a long time … and no possibility of parole. Ever."

He stared, forehead crinkling. "Break him out?" The idea had clearly never occurred to him. Casey swallowed against the pain of her foot and her hand, and against the pounding of her heart. _Slowly, slowly, don't push him._

"It's just a thought. I don't know if it would be possible. Arnaut, I'm so dry, may I have a drink of water?"

He moved as if in a daze, filled a plastic tumbler at a tap out of her vision field, and returned to hold it to her lips. She fumbled them around its edge and the water spilled. "Please" – she nodded to her right arm, the one he'd freed before to let her eat without his assistance. Brow still furrowed, he reached for the pocket knife on the rolling cart and cut through the elbow tie. "But why would you suggest it to me?" He moved the knife to the wrist tie, and paused, staring at her. She nodded at the water glass he held encouragingly. Tried not to let him see that she was shaking.

"I have my reasons." He slipped the knife between the plastic tie and her skin. She focused on not tensing up. "You'd be surprised at the sympathy I have for you, Arnaut."

He shook his head. The knife sliced upward through the black plastic.

Casey lunged for the hammer. Grabbed its head. Frantically reversed her hold to the handle as Arnaut howled and the knife became a dagger against her inner forearm. She jerked the hammer backward for leverage and then forward with all her might.

She was weak from extended time lying on the guerney, and he didn't go down. But he was surprised and it hurt; he yowled, the knife flew from his hand as he reflexively jerked it to his caved-in cheek, which she'd impacted. And because of that, she had time for another blow as he was dodging backward; this one hit his left temple with a solid, sickening thunk. He crumpled to the floor.

Her breath coming in gasps, every limb shaking with terror and what had to be a massive dump of adrenaline into her bloodstream, Casey scrambled to the side of the gurney, scanning the floor for where the pocket knife had fallen. She spotted it, and rocked the gurney viciously until it toppled. Bumps and bruises disregarded, she used her one free arm to crawl and drag the cart the short distance to the knife, and once it was in her hand, sawed through the remaining plastic ties. Her gaze darted back and forth between her efforts and the still form of Arnaut. Was he dead? About to awaken and catch her, stop her? The last tie was especially difficult because her hand trembled so much, and she gave herself as many wounds as she did the plastic. But at last it gave.

As she lurched to her feet, the adrenaline shaking her also allowing her to ignore the distant clamoring pain, Arnaut twitched. She screeched, a sound beyond her control, and turned a circle looking for the stairs. She found them; raced up them with stumbling steps. Only to find a metal door, securely locked.

Back to the basement floor, where Arnaut groaned. He must have the key - she bent for the hammer, and moved to stand over him. She patted down one pocket, and as she was starting on the other, Arnaut's eyes opened. She jerked back with a gasp, but not fast enough to avoid his reach for her. He got hold of the wrist that held the hammer, but she wrenched it away and aimed it for his head again. He was blinking groggily. She missed, and swung so forcefully and clumsily that she lost the hammer. Panting frantically, she backpedalled from the man as he rolled to his stomach.

_Windows_. They were small and high and plastic-covered: what if there was something more substantial than glass over them? No time for that, they were her only chance - she needed to climb to them; could she even fit through them? Only half-aware of the whimpers emitting from her mouth, she grabbed the gurney, righted it, and pushed it till it clanged into the cement block wall. She could tell it wouldn't put her close enough. Damn, damn, damn! Arnaut had his feet under him and was wavering upright. She risked coming back toward him, for the metal cart.

The cart she shoved up onto the bed and upright, perilously balanced on the thin mattress. No time for the brakes. She clambered up, precariously, and grabbed the pruning shears which seemed the heaviest implement on the tray. Her heart pounded and the cart rocked as she carefully maneuvered herself onto it, one knee at a time, and then rose up to her feet. The window was now shoulder height and she could grab its lip to steady herself. But Arnaut was growling behind her, and moving. _Mother Mary full of grace . . . _Every breath a sob, and the tears in her eyes obscuring her vision, Casey balanced on the cart on the bed as both rocked beneath her, long enough to stretch her arm back and then slam the metal end of the pruners into the plastic-covered window. It was glass; it didn't break. Screaming in frustration, she hit it again and this time felt it shatter.

There was a roar behind her, of pain and rage; she hysterically beat the largest shards of glass from the opening she'd made. With no time to clear the smaller pieces, and sobbing, she rammed her arms through and ducked her head down and out into daylight. It was blinding. Blood from lacerating glass slivers added itself to her inability to see.

She'd gotten her shoulders wedged through when she felt the cart swing out from under her and her feet kicked empty space._ Oh God no please no please no - _Hands grabbed her ankles, and Arnaut was screaming something. She was so close to freedom. Panting with effort and fear, Casey braced her hands against the gritty cement of the building's exterior, kicking wildly against the force trying to pull her back down, into horror. _No, no, no!_ Her flailing feet caught him somewhere in the torso and the hands momentarily lost their grip. She pulled her chest through the broken window, scrambling with all her might. He was hissing curses and intentions of retribution behind her – _you'll be sorry bitch, you'll pay for this _- his hands grabbed viciously at her thighs, and there was pain from scraping glass. But the hands kept losing their grip as she struggled; most of her body was out now, and she had leverage. She finally heaved her hips and then knees through.

Clambering frenziedly to her feet she tried to take in as much of her surroundings as possible through tears and blood and too-bright light. A quiet residential neighborhood. The reason there'd been no street noise audible in that baseent. There were brief scrambling noises and loud swearing at the window behind her, and then ominous silence. He was coming up the stairs to get outside. To get her.

She ran.

The yards were green and open, unfenced. Directionless, he crossed one then another, darting through properties. No one was outside. It was mid-day in December – it was still December, right? – and no one was outdoors. She was too afraid to stop and knock on a door close to the house she'd just left; no one would be quick to let a ragged, bleeding, crazy-looking woman use their phone. He would find her.

But she zigged and zagged, and made it five streets over, she had yet to hear or see Arnaut. Gasping more from fright than exertion, she picked a house with a car in the driveway and banged on the door.

"Call 9-1-1!" She screamed as loudly as she could. If the owners weren't home hopefully a neighbor would hear.

"I need help! Hurry! Call 9-1-1!" A blind twitched at the front window, and she plowed through shrubbery to pound on its glass.

"Call 9-1-1, damn you!" Belatedly, she realized she still had the pruning shears in her hand. She raised them threateningly.

"I'm going to break in!" She screeched, and thought she sounded as insane as she felt. _Good._

"I'll break this window! I will! **CALL 9-1-1!"** She screamed until she was hoarse.


	18. Chapter 18

Munch and Fin exited Cragen's office. Without breaking stride, Fin tossed a file onto his desk and jerked his head at Elliot. The man stood from the deli sandwich of which he'd been half-heartedly trying to swallow bites while waiting to hear the results of what the other two detectives were discussing with their Captain. "We've got a warrant," Munch supplied as he passed Elliot. "We're going to search Fine's home address."

Elliot didn't waste time, grabbing his jacket and following his fellow officers to the elevator. He waited till it was headed down to ask what in Casey's case had broken. Again, Munch was the one who spoke up. Fin was . . . very quiet. Even for Fin.

"Right after James Kirnel was sentenced, his lawyer paid a visit to Pedro Harkness, who among other things is an employee of Distinctive, Inc.. Distinctive is a somewhat shady little company out of Nassau County that, as it turns out, includes caller ID spoofing amongst its varied services. About two hours before that first stalker call to Novak's phone, Kirnel called this guy. And then the nephew, Elias, made the call to Novak, spoofing the jail's ID." As they exited the elevator, Elliot pulled out his cell and called Olivia to update her on events. She was conducting an interview on an unrelated case; she told him with regret that she didn't think she could wrap things up in time to join them.

Fine's apartment was in a high rise building gone somewhat to seed in North Riverdale. No one answered when Fin pounded his fist on the door; and no one was present when the uniforms entered ahead of the detectives. There was a solitary twin-size mattress on the floor of the single bedroom; furniture was sparse. The area would have been sparklingly clean, excepting the fine layer of dust over everything. It didn't look like the man had been home for several days.

Fin stood in the bare-walled living room on mundane beige carpet with his fists clenched, trying to relax his shoulders and losing that fight. Frustrated curses brimmed in his mind, and he let them out in a half-mutter that Munch nevertheless heard. "We'll make the rounds of the neighbors," Munch offered, indicating himself and Elliot, "you stay here with the search. Holler if you find anything."

Fin grunted in reply and barely noticed the other two leaving. Uniforms were already going through the bedroom, bathroom and the living room in which he stood; so he headed in to the small kitchen and one by one jerked drawers open and went through them. The room was orderly to the point of compulsion when he started; when he ended it looked as though a pack of wild dogs had been let loose inside it.

Munch and Elliot were back before he could begin to wreck the same kind of havoc on the little balconey with its pots of thriving plants, the only homey touch in the otherwise sterile environment. "The neighbors haven't seen Fine in 7 or 8 days," Elliot reported, his voice brisk, holding Fin's eyes with his own steadily. "He's not real friendly, surprise surprise, so none of them know much about him. And as we know, he's got no full-time job. But one guy a few doors down says he does sometimes pick up hours at the local corner grocery store. We're headed there next."

"All right." Fin thought about taking those interviews himself, briefly; then discarded it. He knew his grasp on control was slipping. If the shop owner did or said anything that hit him wrong, his reaction wouldn't be helpful in the least. So with his jaw clenched, he let Munch and Elliot leave again without him.

They returned with nothing. "Owner's Edward Liu," Munch offered, "and says that the only person he's ever seen Fine talk much with is his son, Jason Liu. Jason helps his dad out at the store now and then but he's an engineer, lives over in Montclair – New Jersey. And he's on vacation at the beach right now, his dad says he didn't take his cell phone. We called his hotel. Left an urgent message for him to call us."

Which meant that for now, they were stalled – and the Liu guy was definitely a long shot, anyway. Meanwhile Casey was somewhere, probably terrified and in pain if she was alive, and if not . . . Fin closed his eyes and turned his back to Munch, unable to keep his lips from curling over his teeth into a snarl. There had to be _something_ else!

"Olivia's finished up that interview and is going to the address for the Distincitive employee," Elliot stated quietly, from behind Fin. "And we can head up to Distinctive itself in Nassau. See what we can turn up."

Right. Fin nodded, staring unseeingly out the sliding glass door onto the little balconey. His brain wasn't being real … cooperative, just now. "Yeah, let's do that."

His cell rang.

Fin almost didn't answer it. But turning back around to Munch's questioning face, he sighed and pulled it out. Then he hit the 'receive' button with rather more force than necessary; it was Cragen at the precinct.

"Novak's in Jersey," the Captain informed him without preamble. "She's mostly OK, or going to be. Ah, she's been arrested."


	19. Chapter 19

Fin's most immediate reaction to hearing Casey's story – Cragen's version of it - was that Jersey cops were idiots.

"A housewife in Montclair called 9-1-1 because there was a crazy-looking woman banging on her window and yelling that she was going to break in. Cops showed up, figured Casey was high on something, arrested her. Apparently she looked pretty rough." At that, Fin's teeth ground together. "They were gearing for a psych admission, actually, before someone bothered to check on her claim that she was an ADA. Branch is talking to their Captain right now. Casey had a lot of lacerations and they're saying a broken foot; they've take her to HackensackUMC ER."

Fin's second reaction was to head out the door as soon as he heard the name of the place, while programming the address into his GPS. Munch followed him, firing questions.

"Casey's found," Fin answered over his shoulder. "In Jersey. At some hospital called HackensackUMC." His GPS said the drive would be 40 minutes. It was mid-day. He'd take his car.

"Whoa," Munch called, darting around in front of his partner and forcing him to a halt in the narrow hallway. Fin glared.

"You're in no shape to drive," Elliot offered evenly from behind him. "Let one of us. Or take a cab."

Fin shook his head. He had no patience, right now, for a cab driver. "Fine," he gritted out, yanking his keys from his pocket and handing them to Munch.

"I'll get Olivia and we'll pay a visit to Kirnel. They find the nephew?"

"No," Fin answered, "but there's cops all over the neighborhood trying to find the house Casey described being held in. Did you get the address of that store owner's engineer son in Montclair? Can't be a coincidence that's where she is."

Elliot had it, and was calling Cragen to give it to him as they stepped out into the parking lot. "I'll get Olivia and we'll pay Kirnel a visit," he offered after Cragen told him he'd relay the information to the Jersey police, and hung up.

Fin shot Munch a look. Munch nodded. "Let me take that visit," he told Elliot. Elliot took in Fin's expression, and nodded. It was Fin's and Munch's case.

So Elliot drove Fin to Monclair. They were a good 15 minutes down the road before Fin's third reaction set in. His hands started to tremble. _She's safe._ He folded his arms to keep Elliot from seeing them shake, and leaned back against the headrest. He let his eyelids drop down. _Injured, but safe._ He'd been thinking of her so hard for so long, trying to prepare himself for the worst – that she was dead – while avoiding thoughts of what Fine might be doing to her. And now she was _safe_. As the knowledge sank past mental to gut level, he let out a long breath, and realized that it felt as though he'd been hold that breath for the past . . . what had it been? Three days? _She's safe_. He let the profoundness of it soak through his soul, and let go his tension. They'd find the nephew. They'd put it all on Kirnel, where it belonged. She had probably been through horror and there were bound to be repercusions from that. But right now, all that mattered to him was that Casey was safe.

_SVU_

_SVU_

Casey wanted to laugh. Cry, too. The combination was probably a sign of approaching hysteria, she judged, and so tried to bury both those emotional signs of her recent stress. On the bumpy ambulance ride to the hospital, she had time to calm down a little. The profession presence of a cop in uniform and the paramedic riding with her had helped. Her voice was hoarse, anyway; she didn't have much vocal ability at the moment.

Once she got to the hospital the personnel were thoroughly professional, keeping their faces straight and making steady eye contact. But Casey knew she'd be a topic of conversation later at the nurse's station. Taking stock of herself from her cart in a curtained ER bay, she could understand why the cops, first responders to the 9-1-1 call, had taken no chances. She'd been wearing a dirty and bloody pair of pajamas, was also barefoot, lacerated and actively bleeding, limping, and – oh yes – brandishing a sharp tool and screaming about the cops, danger, and breaking and entering. Then she'd topped all that off by telling them she was a NYC ADA.

She'd been so grateful when the township dispatcher finally connected Arthur Branch through to one of the Montclair cops to hear a shortened version of her story!

So now her arrester was her police escort, a guard parked in a chair beside her. No standing blindly outside the curtain for that one; she'd refused, and Casey'd agreed to let her in, after the nurse had divested Casey of her bloody pajamas – "Evidence!" the female officer had called through the curtain, and been right of course – and been thoroughly photographed, examined, and then finally allowed to clean up a little.

She was being admitted overnight, she was advised. She had no protest. An IV was running an antibiotic into a vein on her left forearm, and she'd just been given a shot of morphine. Her injured toe was splinted, her abused fingers were bandaged, her various aches and pains were just beginning to assert their existence in clamoring calls to her brain. She'd take a mattress on the floor of a crackhouse, right now, if it meant she could just get some _sleep_.

_SVU_

_SVU_

She was asleep, of course. After the adrenaline-fueled last few days, added to the paucity of information about her status beyond 'fine', 'lacerations', and 'broken foot', Fin felt unexpectedly let down. He stood in the doorway of Casey's room with Elliot, listening and trying to watch the doctor who was issuing instructions. But his eyes wouldn't relinquish sight of her for long. She looked a mess; long scratches down visible skin, some of them stitched and bandaged closed. One hand was completely wrapped so it wasn't possible to tell what was beneath there. He didn't see a cast on either of her feet but maybe there hadn't been time for that yet. The doc was saying she'd be asleep for a few hours at least, till some of the morphine's effects wore off. They were absolutely not to try waking her. Also, the two men were frowningly admonished, their coworker was likely to be confused and not remember too many details of her ordeal, at first, and they weren't to push her too hard.

Fin nodded, Elliot nodded, and the doctor left. The NYC detectives had greeted Officer Peterson, a woman in a Montclair Police Department uniform standing guard just inside Casey's room, when they arrived. The FBI was here as well, in the form of Special Agent Ruan, and he wanted interviews and information.

Casey was asleep; Fin had seen her safe and alive with his own eyes. That was enough, for now. They might as well give the man what he wanted.

_SVU_

_SVU_

There was an obnoxious beeping noise and far too many people around when Casey awoke. She was in a single-bed hospital room. A man in a suit who was probably federal entered it, with Detective Elliot, just as her eyelids were fluttering open; they were likely the noise that had roused her. A nurse preceded them and gave a small, impersonal smile when she saw Casey had awakened. In a far corner of the room, Casey's arrester-turned-protector was still present, sitting in one of those plastic-covered metal hospital chairs. And at Casey's left hand, in that chair's exact duplicate, was Fin. He dropped the magazine he'd been perusing into his lap and met her gaze. Her heart kinked in on itself. His face was tired, worn; his eyes were soft and intense at the same time.

"I'm Tanya," the dark-skinned nurse was saying as she pushed buttons on the IV pump. The beeping stopped, a blessing. Casey nodded but didn't try to speak; her throat felt parched. "Now that you're awake, I need to do an assessment. I can shoo all these folks out of here and do it now, or I can give you time to deal with them and come back in half an hour."

Well, that was an easy decision. "Shoo," Casey managed to croak out. The nurse cracked a real grin this time.

"You heard her, folks. Everyone out. Including you," she emphasized, pointing a long and regal finger at the fed who'd opened his mouth to protest. "She's not yet oriented enough to be able to answer any of your questions. Let her wake up."

Everyone exited. Fin rose from her bedside without a word, without a touch. He was the last one out; Casey didn't protest, but once he was out of sight she wanted him back.


End file.
